


Beneath a Blue and Foreign Sky

by zoicite



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Haunted Houses, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Sharing a Bed, Suicide Attempt, Upgrading to explicit in chapter 9, attempted drowning and strangulation, handwaving at medical stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-01-30 06:33:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21423757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoicite/pseuds/zoicite
Summary: Diverges from canon following Chapter 37.Harrow has a decision to make.
Relationships: Camilla Hect/Coronabeth Tridentarius, Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 56
Kudos: 380





	1. Harrow

**Author's Note:**

> _“The sword made a terrific clatter as it dropped to the ground. The breeze blew Harrow’s hair into her mouth as she ran back and strained at the arms of her cavalier, pulled and pulled, so that she could take her off the spike and lay her on her back. Then she sat there for a long time. Beside her, Gideon lay smiling a small, tight, ready smile, stretched out beneath a blue and foreign sky.” -- Gideon the Ninth _  


Harrow sat with her head bent low over the battered body of her fallen cavalier. It felt like she’d been keeping vigil there for a very long time. Long enough for Harrow to press her hands to Gideon Nav’s chest, to try to push Gideon’s blood back into her wounds. Long enough for Harrow to touch her wet red fingers to Gideon’s face, red stains on Gideon’s pale painted cheek, war paint smeared beside Gideon’s small satisfied smile. Long enough for Harrow to pull the string of prayer beads from her pocket, to desperately click through the knuckles, to rattle through prayers left unheard until she screamed in frustration and threw the bones across what remained of the crumbling terrace. Harrow sobbed, loud and moaning, and didn’t care who heard. She took Gideon’s hand in hers and pressed the backs of Gideon’s still-warm fingers to her lips. 

She didn’t notice the low humming of the approaching shuttles until Camilla the Sixth laid a careful touch on her shoulder.

“Reverend Daughter?” Camilla asked gently. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but we have a decision to make.”

It took a full minute for Harrow to register the words. When she looked up at Camilla, Camilla flinched at the horrible state of Harrowhark, at the blood and the tears, the sweat and whatever was left of her paint. Harrow wiped her face on the sleeve of her robe. Camilla wasn’t looking so great herself. Her skin looked pale and sick, a little green, and she cradled her arm against her chest, careful not to move her wounded shoulder.

The Sixth, Harrow reminded herself, had lost someone too. Camilla had lost her necromancer and she was torn and she was standing strong. Somewhere inside, if she still lived, Judith Deuteros lost her cavalier and weathered it with strength and resolve. Harrow crumbled, more in common with the Fourth than the Second or the Sixth.

There was a difference though. Harrow had only just discovered what she and Gideon could be together, had only just learned that they could be so much more than they were, more than foils, more than swords and chains. Camilla stood before Harrow in mourning of what she lost. Harrow broke and wailed for what she never knew she had.

“What are we going to do when they arrive?” Camilla asked again, a cavalier deferring to the only necromancer left for guidance. 

Nausea rose fast and crested hard in Harrow’s gut. She closed her eyes and turned away from Camilla, turned away from Gideon. She threw up on the cracked flagstones, a steaming puddle of bloody sick that made her retch again at the sight of it. 

Camilla stared politely up at the sky and waited for Harrow to compose herself.

“Does it matter anymore?” Harrow asked, once she was able to manage words again. Her mouth tasted sour and metallic.

“I can’t tell you that,” Camilla said. “But we all saw what became of the Third twin, and I see you now, and I don’t think -- Of course, I can’t say for sure, but --”

“You think I failed,” Harrow finished, bitterly, voicing the truth she felt in her heart, in her open and achingly empty soul. “You think I failed and she died for nothing.”

“No,” Camilla said. “Septimus is dead. You and Nav saved us from that fate and there’s no failure in that. But you aren’t a Lyctor now, are you?”

“No,” Harrow conceded, her voice hoarse, a choking whisper. “I don’t think I am.”

“Yeah. Because the thing is -- you couldn’t be a Lyctor if your cavalier was still alive, could you. It didn’t sound like it worked that way. That’s just siphoning then.”

Harrow turned to study Camilla. What had happened at the end was not simply siphoning, but -- “Explain.”

The drone of the shuttles was louder. They must be hovering close now, though they weren’t visible from their vantage point on the terrace.

Camilla crouched down beside Harrow with a hissing breath. She propped her bad arm on her knee and then reached out with her other hand, held it carefully with palm down over Gideon’s chest. Harrow looked at the body of her cavalier through drying tears, through radiating waves of exhaustion that blurred her vision. 

“Look at her,” Camilla said. “It shouldn’t be possible, especially not after you pulled her off that spike, but look at her chest rise beneath my hand. She’s still breathing.”

“I don’t --”

She couldn’t see anything. Gideon just lay there, the bloody and broken waste of Harrow’s entire existence, her whole universe. Harrow bent down over her cavalier until her face was close to Gideon’s mouth, to the short point of Gideon’s nose, and there she waited. She didn’t have to wait long before she felt it, a faint puff of warm air that cooled itself against her damp cheek.

“Nav,” Harrow whispered. Her heart beat faster, and she searched the sky for the shuttles. Nothing yet.

“She’s still breathing,” Camilla repeated. “She really shouldn’t be, but she is. So my question remains, what are we going to do now?”

“If we move her?” Harrow asked. She folded Gideon’s hand in hers, gripped it tight.

“She’ll likely die,” Camilla admitted. “I’m sorry to say this, but she’ll likely die no matter what we choose. I can’t do anything for her and I don’t imagine she’ll last long enough to get to someone who can.”

Harrow studied Gideon’s face, that upward curve to her lips. The tight pride in that smile sliced at Harrow’s already broken and severed heart. Gideon had given everything for Harrow, more than Harrow ever would have dared ask, more than Harrow wanted. 

“They’ll want to contain this,” Harrow said. “They’ll move to control the surviving witnesses, the voices that might speak out.” 

“I think so,” Camilla agreed.

So that was it then. They could stay where they were, become servants to the Emperor, controlled and silenced. They could place themselves in the hands of the Emperor’s horrors -- his _Lyctors_ \-- and likely die in their fists, or they could attempt to flee and Gideon would die in Harrow’s arms. There were no good choices, but one thing was certain, focused and crystal clear: Harrow owed Gideon Nav her life and Nav would not be beholden to anyone ever again, not to the Ninth House and certainly not to the King Undying.

“Come on,” Harrow said and made the only decision she could, the only viable choice. “We have to get her inside. I know where we can go.”


	2. Camilla

The slam of the hatch door was nothing more than a dull distant thud, easily missed, but the sound slapped against Camilla Hect’s nerves like the howling shriek of a fire alarm. Camilla strained to listen, but it was impossible to hear what else was happening on the ladder from their hiding place, crouched beneath the floor panels of the dilapidated Laboratory Ten. The fact that they heard the hatch at all meant that it must have been closed with excessive force.

Beside her, the Reverend Daughter shifted to give Camilla more space and Cam inched further back among the pipes and wires, carefully adjusted her sword, as ready as she could be for whatever was coming next. She positioned herself in front of the Ninth necromancer, in front of her unmoving cavalier. Camilla was badly wounded and down to one sword, but her body still itched to move, to scream and slash and fight. Her second sword was abandoned somewhere on the terrace along with the Ninth’s longsword. They’d left them in their rush to move Gideon’s body, and her limbs still cried out from the effort. 

Harrowhark Nonagesimus appeared to be listening as intensely as Cam, but not for approaching footsteps. Harrow had her head pressed to Gideon Nav’s bloody chest, presumably listening to the slow, unsteady, and blessedly _very stubborn_ beat of the Ninth cavalier’s heart. The air around them was cold enough that Camilla could see the white clouds of their breath in the green glow of the dull lighting. The metallic smell of blood still clung thick in her nostrils.

The overhead lights snapped on with an electric buzz, white light piercing the sub-floor where panels and grates had been broken and removed. Camilla studied the squares of light, looked for their footprints in the dust, for the drops and smears of blood. She didn’t find them. They’d been careful and the Reverend Daughter seemed confident that this was the place they should go if they did not want to be found. If there was one thing the Warden had picked up on right away about the Ninth necromancer, it was that she thought in three dimensions. The Ninth had a talent for mental mapping, for position and space, and Harrowhark likely knew this building better now than anyone left alive and most of the recently departed too. 

Everyone except, perhaps, those who created it, those Lyctors who ascended here nine thousand years ago, who descended back down into the facility now.

She could just barely hear footsteps, muffled by the dusty tiles, so faint that Camilla might be imagining them. She was sure she wasn’t imagining them. It sounded like there were two people. That was, if people was the correct term now. Ianthe Tridentarius certainly wasn’t _people_ anymore. Dulcinea Septimus wasn’t people. 

Camilla’s shoulder throbbed, the pain so sharp at times that Camilla had to bite her tongue to stop herself from crying out. She glanced back at Harrowhark. Harrow was watching Camilla with wide black eyes, her hand carefully cradling her necromancer’s smudged cheek. 

Someone coughed and it sounded far away, but sounds were so deceiving down here. Harrowhark shut her eyes, pressed her lips into a tight line.

“She really did a number on this place.” A woman’s voice said, suddenly sounding very close, like she was standing there right beside them. “Did you see the blood back there?”

“I saw it,” another voice replied. This one sounded like they were probably male. “Can you believe this shit? Sixteen of them and this is all that’s left.”

“So where the fuck are the rest of the bodies? God, I hate it down here.”

“Me too,” the man agreed. 

That made three of them. Five of them. She was fairly certain not even the Ninth would disagree on that point anymore.

“What a way to go,” the woman mused, her voice dragging into something close to a groan. “Run through by that one-armed _baby_. Poor Cytherea.”

Ah, so they thought Ianthe Tridentarius was the one to finish off their Lyctor. That was good. Stupid, but good. Beside her, Harrowhark’s face twisted and she rolled her eyes. Thankfully she managed to contain herself and didn’t jump out to announce their error. Camilla relaxed a little knowing that she didn’t need to fight Harrow too, to pull Harrow back and stifle haughty retorts.

“Poor Cytherea? Poor Augustine!” the man countered. “Poor Anastasia! We’re the ones brought in to clean up the debris. All these leftover bits and bobs. She always was exceedingly _messy_. Gobs of blood and goop everywhere.”

“I won’t miss that,” the Lyctor woman (Anastasia, presumably) agreed.

They were right there. They must be standing in Laboratory Ten now, not far from the open floor panels that Harrow and Camilla had crawled beneath, carefully maneuvering Gideon’s body down with them. They’d placed the unresponsive cavalier as far into the space as they could manage, and then they left her and went back to obscure their trail. Together Camilla and Harrowhark rushed through the facility, smearing as much blood as they could, pressing it to the stains left by Isaac Tettares and Abigail Pent, and older stains that Camilla remembered were Harrow’s own. They left bloody smears across sterile laboratory walls. The best they could hope was that the facility would confuse the thanergetic and thalergetic signatures on the various bloods, the same way it seemed to muddle everything else that it hosted within its walls. The best they could hope was that these Lyctors wouldn’t care enough to sort through the mess of it all. They didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic about any of it. That was good too.

“I’ll miss her laugh though,” Anastasia sighed. “Like little bells tinkling in a breeze.”

“Laboratory Ten,” the Lyctor man (Augustine) said, and then he made a noise that could only be described as “blech.”

Someone kicked at one of the grates. Camilla tightened her grip on her sword.

“Clear?” Anastasia asked. She sounded further away now, like she was standing out in the corridor.

“Just more blood,” Augustine said from somewhere above them. He sounded bored. “Doesn’t look like anyone exploded in here anyway.”

Camilla tried to ignore that observation, tried to ignore the implications of the statement. She couldn’t. It was confirmation that they’d found what was left of the Warden. Would they leave him for her to take care of, or would they bag him up and take him with them?

“Do we need to check below?” Anastasia asked. Camilla and Harrowhark tensed simultaneously.

“I’m not going down there,” Augustine said. 

“So we’re done then.” Anastasia said it fast, barely waited for Augustine to finish his sentence. 

“Great,” Augustine agreed.

Their footsteps retreated down the corridor, muffled quickly by the dust and the paneling and the whirring of the lights. The facility was silent. The hatch door made no sound to announce their exit. 

Camilla looked to the Reverend Daughter. Harrow had her fingers pressed to Gideon’s neck, but she was looking back at Camilla. Neither of them spoke for a long time. Sound was tricky down here. The facility had been built to swallow noise. It meant the Lyctors could really be anywhere, they could be standing right outside the laboratory waiting for their prey. It also meant that any noises Camilla and Harrow made would be swallowed up just as quickly, obscured and hidden.

“They didn’t look very hard,” Camilla whispered.

“No,” Harrow agreed.

“Trap?” 

“Maybe.”

“So we stay put,” Camilla concluded.

Camilla saw Harrow nod just as the lights shut down, plunging them back into temporary darkness that was slowly illuminated by a dull green glow. Camilla shifted, cramped and uncomfortable and suddenly completely exhausted. She’d lost a lot of blood and her head threatened to spin if she moved too quickly. She was going to have to have Harrowhark check her wound for bone shards later. She was going to have to disinfect it as best she could with what little they had, and Harrow was going to have to stitch up her shoulder. She hoped the Reverend Daughter knew how to sew. Once her shoulder was closed, she could focus on tying up the holes in Gideon Nav, what little good that might do.

Camilla focused on these steps, on her bag, full of salves and the Warden’s various medical supplies. The bag was sitting safely back in the Sixth’s dark rooms, a thousand miles away. Her right forearm was still bandaged from her fight with Marta the Second -- that was okay, barely even hurt -- but the shoulder. She should put it in a sling until they were safe and settled. Not for too long, or it would get stiff. 

“How long has it been?” Harrow asked, eventually.

“I don’t know,” Camilla said. “A long time. I think they must have left by now.”

“We need to know for sure.”

Camilla took one look at Harrow and knew that if anyone was leaving this hole without Gideon the Ninth in tow, it was going to have to be Camilla. Harrowhark hadn’t seemed averse to ditching her cavalier during most of their stay at Canaan House, but it was clear, even to Camilla, that something had shifted in her, right there at the very end. 

Whatever it was, it wasn’t for Camilla to see, and she pushed it from her mind.

“I’m going up,” she said. She’d find out what was going on and, if they were alone, she’d retrieve her bag and she would get to work. 

She extricated herself from their hiding place and peered up through the floor panels. She saw nothing, just the torn walls and hanging piping that characterised Laboratory Ten. Palamedes spent hours standing in this room trying to work it out, trying to determine why this laboratory was in such disarray, when it had happened, and why. There was no trial here, at least not one that anyone could find. It was just a hollow shell, a wreck, out of place and out of time.

When the lights snapped back on, she flinched, her sword held tight in her good hand. Nothing happened; it was just a motion sensor picking up her own movements. There were no noises, no signs that she had company, and no lights illuminating the far reaches of the corridor.

She encountered no one on the way back to the ladder, but as soon as she pushed open the hatch, grunting with the pain and the effort, she knew that she wasn’t alone. 

She pulled herself herself carefully up out of the tube, less quiet and graceful than she hoped in an attempt to avoid the red shriek of her shoulder. She made it to her feet and drew her sword just as Coronabeth Tridentarius burst forth from the shadows.

“Oh, Sixth!” Corona exclaimed, her puffy tear-stained face bright with relief. 

Camilla said nothing, stood with sword pointed at the Princess of Ida’s chest. 

“It’s just me,” Corona said, her voice brimming with thick phlegmy feeling. She seemed artfully breathless even through the wet sticking of her words. “The shuttles have gone. They’ve taken Ianthe.” 

Coronabeth was holding a rapier, but she kept it loose at her side. Camilla relaxed, just slightly. 

“Have you seen anyone else?” Camilla asked. 

“Not a single soul.”

“I left Nonagesimus below,” Cam said. “Gideon the Ninth is critically wounded. She was still breathing when I left them, but I don’t think it’ll last. Nonagesimus isn’t taking it well.”

“Oh dear,” Corona said, and Camilla surprised herself by laughing. It would have earned her a severely disapproving look from the Warden if he was here. But it was just such an inadequate exclamation for their current situation that it was honestly hilarious. Everyone was dead; Warden, the Second, the Eighth and Teacher. All dead and Corona’s sister was both a murderer and a monster. 

_Oh dear_. 

They were going to have to be wary around Corona. Camilla remembered her bitter sobbing disappointment, her huddled body in the corner of that Lyctor laboratory. That was only a few hours ago, and a few hours wasn’t long enough to go from that level of abandonment and grief to this polite _oh dear_. Between Nonagesimus and Tridentarius, Camilla was going to have to tread very carefully. 

Another cavalier around would have been nice -- a conscious, not dying, Ninth would have been nice. Of course, that’d just mean Septimus -- Cytherea? -- would have taken them all out instead.

Corona, to her credit, completely ignored Camilla’s inappropriate laughter. Instead, she looked at Camilla with an expression of sincere concern and said, “You’re wounded too.”

“Yeah,” Camilla agreed. “I’ll be okay.” She might be okay. She was in a better place than Nav anyway.

“I know you will be,” Corona said, gently. She reached out a hand and placed it low on Camilla’s arm. “Until then, tell me how I can help.”


	3. Harrow

“She’s lost so much blood,” Camilla said, a needle held poised in her gloved hand. “It doesn’t make sense. There’s no way she should be -- I mean, listen, even if she survived the initial fall, as soon as you pulled her off that spike, she should have bled out.”

“Yes, I know,” Harrow agreed, more to stop Camilla from rattling off more of the obvious than anything else. Yes, Griddle did an excellent job attempting to sacrifice herself, and she should have succeeded. She should be dead and Harrow should be a Lyctor, mourning with the rest of them. 

Gideon wasn’t and Harrow wasn’t, and Harrow was not interested in the Sixth’s circular ruminations on the topic while Harrow’s cavalier was laid out on her bed, silent and exposed, with an obscene hole in her chest and another in her back. 

Harrow was in limbo.

Camilla pressed her lips into a tight line. She clearly had more to say on the subject, but she kept it to herself and got to work closing Gideon Nav’s wounds.

Harrow sagged a little, relieved. She sat heavily on the edge of the bed (and earned a glare from Camilla. Deserved.) and took Gideon’s hand in hers. They’d had to undress Gideon, remove her shirt and cut off her bandeau to get at the wound. Harrow tried not to look too long or too hard. Gideon looked closer to death like this than she had in any other moment since falling on the spike and Harrow would not choose to remember her like this. Like Abigail Pent laid out in the morgue, her gut cut open and ransacked. 

Before they got to this point, Camilla guided Coronabeth through sewing up her shoulder, and as Corona worked with her brow furrowed in concentration and her pink tongue sticking out from between full lips, Camilla explained to Harrow that for Gideon the sutures would not matter much. The internal damage would still be there and all of the salves and ointments that the Sixth carried with them to Canaan House wouldn’t fix nine thousand years of rust and salt and whatever else was on that wretched spike. Closing the skin wouldn’t fix what was torn inside.

Harrow listened patiently to Camilla’s long-winded and unnecessary explanation and when Camilla finally ran out of words (she was sounding more like Sextus by the second), Harrow waved a hand and said, “You’ve said your piece and I understand the underlying conditions, but we aren’t going to leave my cavalier as she is now. Let’s get on with it, Sixth. I want this done.”

Camilla sighed and looked up at Coronabeth, as though she actually might find an ally there. Lengthy explanations of the obvious aside, Harrow trusted Camilla, more or less, but the Third...

Corona chewed on her lip as she pulled back from Camilla’s shoulder and stood to her full height, needle in hand. She towered over Harrow and Camilla, a perfect picture of tear-stained health surrounded by injury and decay. Eventually she said, “Perhaps you should try the ascension again.” 

“Perhaps you should have followed your bitch sister off the First like the obedient dog you are,” Harrow suggested. Harrow hadn’t forgotten how quickly Corona backed down when the Third challenged the wounded Sixth. She hoped that the Sixth had not forgotten either. 

Corona pulled back as though struck. Good. This Princess of Ida should have thrown herself at the invading Lyctors, begged for them to take her too. Maybe she did. She hasn’t said where she was while they were busy hiding in the floor. Either way, she was Harrow’s problem now, and Corona had best keep her distance.

“I just want to make sure we’re on the same page with this,” Camilla continued, dark eyes back on Harrow.

“We are,” Harrow said. “You won’t be blamed in the event of my cavalier’s death. We were both there at the end.” That’s what it all came down to. Camilla was wary of Harrow, was not sure she trusted her in this moment, and that was fine. It was smart.

Now Harrow’s thumb traced circles into the soft meat of Gideon’s palm. It was, perhaps, a gesture too intimate for the mixed company, for the situation, but Harrow needed Gideon to know that she was there, that Harrow saw that Gideon was not giving in and Harrow was not about to either. 

Corona stood by the door with her arms folded tight beneath her breasts. Her shoes were off and her feet were bare. She looked cold.

Harrow slid her fingers up to press against Gideon’s wrist, searching for her pulse. 

_Don’t you dare die on me now, Nav. I’ll bring you back just to kill you myself._

The threat turned out to be unnecessary as her fingers found Gideon’s pulse, still faint and still steady. Harrow wanted to press her mouth to Gideon’s wrist, feel that heartbeat amplified against her tongue. The impulse surprised her and she dropped Gideon’s hand, flustered and embarrassed. 

Camilla was entirely focused on her task, her head bent over Gideon’s bare torso, blunt hair falling forward and obscuring her eyes. Harrow didn’t like looking at Camilla’s hands on Gideon’s bare skin, touching Gideon with a practiced careful confidence. She could think of nothing but death, of lost potential, and her stomach turned and she tasted bile. So she looked away from Camilla’s hands and turned toward the Third instead. Coronabeth was leaning against the wall and staring right at them, but she didn’t look like she was actually seeing anything in front of her. She seemed to be somewhere else entirely, a million miles away. Her fingers pulled absently at a tear in her gauzy gold robe.

Eventually, after a long stretch of silence, Camilla said, “Okay, help me turn her over.”

Harrow turned to inspect Camilla’s work. The sutures were three bright branches of blue just below Gideon’s breast. It was better than before, better than torn flesh stained an angry red with spilled blood, but it still made Harrow’s nausea rise, and she nodded quickly and stood to help. When Corona stepped forward, Harrow situated herself so that Corona could handle Gideon’s legs, but could not touch Gideon’s exposed skin. 

They waited while Camilla taped a white bandage over the sutures, and together, they turned Gideon so that she was lying on her stomach, her head turned carefully toward Harrow. Harrow studied Gideon’s face, the set of her slack mouth and the push of her cheek against the bedsheets. It wasn’t much different than all of the nights that came before this one, when Harrow returned to their rooms in the early hours of the morning to find Gideon sprawled on the floor in a nest of blankets, snoring. Harrow studied her cavalier’s face then too, but with a different set of thoughts pulling at her mind. Could she be trusted? Had she been compromised? If forced to choose, which way would she go?

Harrow knew the answers to all of those questions now. She squeezed her eyes shut, took deep long breaths.

“Are you going to be sick?” Corona asked, a touch of panic in her voice. “I’ll get a bucket.” She rushed from the room in a flurry of fabric.

“At least she didn’t say she’d ‘fetch’ a bucket,” Camilla murmured without once lifting her head from her work. Harrow snorted and felt marginally better.

By the time Corona returned, Camilla was finished with Gideon’s back. They wrapped bandages around Gideon’s torso and Harrow rooted around until she found one of Gideon’s shirts that was (1) clean and (2) loose-fitting enough to make maneuvering her body into it a fraction easier.

Corona waited until Gideon was dressed and arranged back on the bed to make her pronouncement.

“We should move into the Third’s quarters.”

“No,” Harrow said, immediately. This was the second time that Coronabeth made this same proposition. The first time was as they were transporting Gideon’s body up from their hiding place in the facility. Harrow decided that the suggestion didn’t deserve a verbal response then, and had simply stared daggers at Corona and let Camilla deal with it.

“There are enough beds in our chambers for everyone here” Corona explained. “We will have everything we need and we’ll all be more comfortable.” She eyed Harrow’s strings of hanging bone with a pinched disgust as though they proved her point. As though jewelry and pillows were more comforting than the power of accessible bone.

“Why did the Third need four beds?” Camilla asked.

“I don’t care where you sleep,” Harrow cut in. “I’m staying here and so is my cavalier.”

“But where will you rest?” Corona asked, and then looked horrified by Harrow’s exasperated wave toward the cavalier’s cot. 

“Oh,” Camilla said, translating Corona’s look and connecting it to the composition of the people in the room. “You meant that the Third has two beds and two cots.” 

“Yes,” Corona said. Camilla studied Corona for a moment, her mouth turned down in a frown.

Harrow looked up at the ceiling and wished that Gideon was conscious so that she could express in that uniquely _Nav_ way the justified disgust that Harrow (and surely Camilla) was feeling at the very thought of sleeping in beds formerly occupied by Ianthe Tridentarius and Naberius Tern, of Camilla expected to sleep at Coronabeth’s feet on the very same day that her necromancer died. 

“I -- Thank you, but I’m going back to our rooms. My room,” Camilla corrected. She was busying herself by packing away the needles and bandages, placing them carefully into her large bag. She paused to look up at Harrow. “Unless you need me here.”

Harrow shook her head. Camilla should take what time and space she needed. 

“Oh, but do you think it’s wise to split up now?” Corona asked. “I didn’t mean to presume, I was merely thinking about the logistics.”

Camilla shrugged. “You’re welcome to come with me,” she offered. “We have a very comfortable couch.”

That flustered Corona and her lips tried to form several soundless words. Harrow turned to check on her cavalier in an attempt to hide her smile. She pressed her thumb to Gideon’s neck, just to check, just to confirm.

“Perhaps you’re both right,” Corona eventually concluded, her voice bright and breathy once more. “Perhaps it would be best if we kept to our corners.”

“I actually think that you’re right,” Camilla said. “We _should_ stick together, but the Ninth needs to rest. We’ve already moved her around too much. Sticking together means you and I moving into the Ninth’s rooms and I think we’re all too tired to contemplate rearranging furniture now.”

Harrow sneered at Gideon’s unmoving face. She didn’t like the idea of Corona moving into these rooms at all and she hated how reasonable Camilla sounded stating the need. She’d have to endure what remained of the Third and the Sixth in the outer room, but she was adding bone wards to the bedroom door as soon as they were out.

“Tomorrow then,” Harrow said, and stood. “We’ll discuss it further in the morning.” She walked toward Corona and Corona took the hint, retreated into the main room and gathered her shoes in her hand. Camilla followed, lugging her bag, her one sword strapped to her back.

Once they were finally out, Harrow took care to secure the rooms, and then washed the paint and blood from her face and stepped into the sonic. Clean and dressed, she spread cold cream carefully over Gideon’s face and neck, trying not to think too much about how unnatural it felt, Gideon so still beneath her fingers. She removed the thick layer covering her cavalier with a warm wet cloth. 

Eventually there was nothing left to do but sleep. 

Harrow climbed into the bed beside Gideon, curled up against her, her head on Gideon’s shoulder and her palm pressed gently over Gideon’s beating heart. Alone and this close, she could hear the soft sound of Gideon breathing against all the odds. 

That was the thing though, wasn’t it.

The Sixth did not know Gideon Nav. The Sixth did not their history.

Camilla had no idea that Gideon Nav survived ten minutes of nerve gas as an infant in a cot placed mere feet from the vent. She could not know about the time that Marshal Crux poisoned Gideon’s dinner, so disgusted by Gideon’s lack of loyalty, her lack of respect, that he was willing to defy the Lady of the Ninth House if it meant getting rid of the rot once and for all. 

Gideon was sick for days, _incredibly_ sick, and then somehow... she wasn’t. Harrow didn’t recognize it for what it was then, assumed that it was simply food poisoning until she was presented with evidence otherwise by Aiglamene, months after the fact. Harrow understood now. That was the second time Gideon Nav cheated death. 

Camilla the Sixth saw the aftermath of the siphoning challenge and she understood how lucky Gideon was to survive with faculties intact, but she wasn’t actually _there_, she didn’t feel how far Harrow pushed her cavalier, she didn’t feel how fiercely Gideon held on. Harrow recognized that for what it was now too. Number three. 

And now this -- Gideon offered her soul to Harrow on a platter, sliced and ready, beautifully garnished. And yet Harrow was empty and Gideon Nav was still breathing. 

Number four.

Harrow’s eyes were dry. Her tears were replaced by a parched resolve, by the conviction that she knew Gideon Nav better than Camilla the Sixth and all her medical knowledge, all of her facts. Gideon did not subscribe to the medical journals of the Sixth. Gideon was planted in dead soil, fertilized with poison and still she grew tall, still she blossomed, again and again and again.

Harrow listened to the steady beat of Gideon Nav’s heart, the shallow breathing of her lungs. She let their music lull her to sleep.


	4. Coronabeth

“Hello? Who’s there?”

Corona’s hands shook as she pressed them carefully to the worn wood door of the Third’s quarters. Her gold bracelets clicked against each other, alerting whoever was outside to her rising fear. The door was secured with three very solid locks, but they seemed so flimsy to Corona, used to her sister’s impenetrable wards. She leaned in until her ear pressed against the wood, the back of her earring pushing hard and sharp against her neck. She listened.

Nothing. The footsteps she was sure she heard were gone. The shuffling sounds, like shifting cloth, were gone too.

“Hello?” she asked again. “Sixth, is that you?”

This, of course, earned no reply either.

“Nonagesimus?” She was grasping at straws now. The Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House would not leave her cavalier’s side that night unless something truly wonderful, or truly terrible, had happened. Unless --

Corona took a step back, her fingers rushing to unlock the latches. She threw the door wide open and stepped out -- into a completely empty corridor. The lights were dull and dim, just as they always were. The wallpaper was sad and peeling just as it was the last time that Corona saw it. 

“Harrowhark?” 

She flexed the fingers of her empty right hand. She could almost hear Naberius now, chiding her for rushing ahead unprepared. 

“You think you have what it takes?” 

He’d laugh, his chest puffed and his head shaking hard enough that a stiff curl would fall down onto his forehead. Babs thought it helped him to bond with Ianthe. He could never have what they had with each other, but look at Coronabeth! She might be Crown Princess of Ida, she might be the twin sister of Ianthe Tridentarius, taller, more beautiful, radiant. She might have a smile that could cause an entire room to stop and stare, but poor Corona wasn’t a necromancer and she wasn’t a cavalier. She pretended to be one and wished she was the other and ended up a fraud at both. 

But now Babs’ laughter was deserved, wasn’t it? After all, this was the hand she should have used to pick up her rapier before she started opening doors to investigate strange noises in corridors. If she thought she had the stuff of the great Third House cavaliers, the rapier should have been on her person, ready.

That was never allowed on the Third. And none of it was ever anything more than a joke to Babs, a joke or an infuriating offense, a mockery when he was feeling particularly touchy.

Corona understood that about Babs. It was devastating to be the one that wasn’t needed.

She pressed her lips together and carefully stepped back into the Third’s quarters. She kept her eyes on the empty corridor as she shut the door. She pushed at it a second time to make sure it was shut tight, and re-fastened the locks. Once that was done, she pushed a heavy armchair in front it, coughing at the cloud of musty dust that puffed up from the fabric. The dust mixed with the scent of the musky perfume she’d used to try to cover the smell of salt and mold that permeated everything on the First. It prickled at her nose and she sneezed.

Satisfied that she was as secure as she could be without the aid of necromancy, Corona stepped back and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. She shook her hair back away from her face and the brief touch of cool air to her neck was a relief.

She had to be more careful. 

If she wasn’t careful, she would start crying again.

**

It helped to keep her mind occupied, to focus on the push and pull of the needle and plastic thread through Camilla the Sixth’s torn skin, on a bucket for a nauseous Nonagesimus, on helping to turn Gideon the Ninth with a firm grip on her legs. Keep herself busy and she won’t have time to think of Ianthe and Babs joined and together forever. She won’t have time to remember that she’s completely and truly alone, discarded, _cleaved_.

Corona rushed around the rooms of the Third in a flurry, collecting pillows and blankets in a pile as Dominicus lit the horizon in beautiful bands of orange and pink. She was determined to keep busy by getting herself and Camilla the Sixth set up with a habitable environment within the Ninth quarters. The list of things she needed to gather was long and would take several trips back and forth through corridors and down staircases. If she took her time, she could keep herself busy all day.

Twice she stopped to listen at the door, sure she heard someone walk pass, her hand on the rapier she strapped at her side. 

No one was left to get upset about that now.

She pushed the chair aside, unlocked and opened the door, and wrapped her arms around a large pile of bedding. She would drop these with the Ninth first, check on Gideon, collect the Sixth if Camilla wasn’t already there, and then together they could gather supplies from the kitchen, bring in the beds, collect their belongings. 

The corridor was empty and quiet, the only sound the clicking of her boots against the tiles of the floor. She felt the urge to run, but she could barely see the floor in front of her over the pile in her arms and the last thing she needed was to trip over rubble or the discarded bones of a fallen skeleton. She took her time, walking carefully through Canaan House with her back straight and her head high. 

She was nearly to the turn for the Ninth quarters when she heard something shuffle behind her. She ignored it at first, but then the sound came again. She slowed and she turned.

There was a figure at the edge of the hall she’d just left, a figure in a familiar white suit, stained in red. It disappeared around the corner.

Corona squinted. “Judith? Judith, is that you?”

She was sure it was Judith, she’d known the Second necromancer since they were children. She set down her blankets, turned and started back towards the hall. By the time she reached the end of the corridor, the hall was empty with no sign of which direction Judith might have retreated.

Corona checked several doors and found nothing. No sign, no footprints, no sound. She called out and received no answer. Eventually there was no choice but to give up, and she gathered her pile of bedding and continued to the bone draped halls of the Ninth. 

She knocked carefully. She didn’t entirely trust Nonagesimus to let them back in.

Just as Corona was reaching out to knock a second time, the door opened and Camilla stepped aside to let Corona enter.

“Good morning, Sixth!” Corona said. “You’re up early!” She dropped her pile of blankets onto the large table inlaid with black glass. 

A tight smile and a tilt of the head was the Sixth’s response. Corona’s smile slipped and she took a step back. “How is the Ninth? Is she still -- ?”

“She’s holding on,” Camilla confirmed. 

“Good.” Corona shrugged out of her robe. She was dressed to host sparring matches, in her slacks and boots, but with her rapier sheathed at her side. Camilla turned away quickly, but not before looking Corona up and down. Usually Corona knew what a look like that meant -- Corona was used to looks -- but something about Camilla’s expression had Corona looking down to make sure she didn’t have a stain on her white shirt or the pale gold of her slacks. She didn’t. 

Camilla cleared her throat. “You must be hungry.”

“Famished,” Corona admitted. “The kitchens are my very next stop. There’s an ugly spot of mold on the ceiling above my bed that looks just like well cooked steak. I was staring at it all night listening to my stomach shout. I thought we could bring the food back here and have a picnic.” She paused, her mind taking her from the route to the kitchen right back to the figure in the hall. “You know, I’m starting to think this House is playing games with me?”

“Why?” Camilla asked, just as Nonagesimus came to stand in the open doorway to the Ninth’s bedroom. She was draped in her usual blackout curtains, her face carefully painted and utterly ghoulish. On the Third, a black vestal of the Ninth was a popular children’s choice for costume parties. Corona herself dressed up as a vestal twice when she was young, before she realized that there were better ways to get attention.

This particular painted ghoul’s eyes were drab and dark, no fire in them at all. Not a single amber flame. 

Camilla was telling the truth then. Gideon the Ninth still lived and Nonagesimus was still just a necromancer. 

The confirmation settled uncomfortably in Corona’s gut. She pushed it aside and dismissed it as hunger.

“Good morning, Harrow,” Corona offered, complete with a generous smile. Nonagesimus barely grunted a response. She must not have slept much either.

“What happened?” Camilla pressed, all business, always.

Corona waved a hand to dismiss whatever it was she’d been saying before the Ninth chose to grace them with her pitch black presence. 

“Nevermind, look. I’ve brought blankets.” Her eyes fell on a pile of containers and baskets on the other side of the table. “You’ve already been to the kitchen?”

“I just returned,” Camilla said. “I brought a few things.“

“Oh,” Corona said, unable to hide a touch of disappointment in her voice. It was fine. There was still so much left that needed to be done. She would just have to move on to the next thing. She started sorting through the pile of food.

“Oh, but this is perfect! We can do so much with this.” There was bread and crackers, several containers of the First’s seaweed soup specialty, a pile of fresh vegetables, a small wheel of nut cheese imported from the Fifth, several tubes of nutrient paste. Corona picked up one of the tubes.

“But how _is_ Gideon?” she asked, turning toward the Ninth. “She’ll need food too.”

She started toward the bedroom door, but Nonagesimus didn’t budge. Right, well. Corona was quite a bit taller than the Ninth necromancer and simply looked in over her shoulder. Gideon the Ninth looked much the same as she had the night before, though her face had been washed. The color in her cheeks looked remarkably healthy given the circumstances. The blankets were pulled up beneath her armpits and her hands were carefully arranged at her sides. There was a tube of nutrient paste and a partially empty container of soup on the bedside table.

“My, you’ve both been so busy!” Corona was up most of the night, staring at the mold, the ticking of a small clock so deafening that eventually Corona was forced to get up and throw it into the next room. By the time she fell asleep it must have been nearly morning. Now she wondered if, by the time she went under, the Sixth and Ninth were already getting up. Perhaps she really had heard them shuffling about in the corridors.

“I’d like to check the greenhouses this morning,” Camilla said. “Someone will need to tend to them if we’re going to be here for -- well, any amount of time, really.”

“I’ll help you,” Corona volunteered, spinning away from the uncomfortably silent Nonagesimus. The Ninth were so funny about everything. Would it kill Harrowhark to simply say hello? Corona heard the bedroom click door shut behind her and she relaxed, her shoulders falling slightly. She smiled apologetically at the Camilla.

“She really does not like me,” Corona observed. It was rare that Corona encountered anyone so immune to her carefully practiced charm. Those rare Ianthes of the world, she liked to think. She didn’t like that thought quite as much now.

“No,” Camilla agreed. She pulled out a chair from the table, invited Corona to sit. Once seated, Camilla pushed her back toward the table and Corona lifted a hand, set it on Camilla’s where it rested on the back of her chair. She looked up at Camilla, who stood there politely, waiting.

“I suppose I shouldn’t take it personally,” Corona continued. “After all, the Ninth has never been known for its hospitality.”

“She doesn’t trust you,” Camilla supplied. “Perhaps with good reason. You’ve been lying to everyone since you arrived, and now your sister’s a Lyctor. She’s gone, and you’re here with us. She doesn’t trust that there isn’t more to that than you’re letting on.”

Corona felt something within her bubble, her blood igniting within her veins. She laughed and let her hand fall away from the Sixth. 

“Yes,” she agreed. “You’re right. We were lying. Now you know the truth, which is that I’m the empty sister, the useless sister. There’s nothing I can do about anything at all. I’ve always been the least threatening of any single person here. And now I’m both unthreatening and utterly alone. Isn’t that lovely?”

Corona’s stomach growled and she shut her eyes, embarrassed by the noise. She heard the scrape of a chair against the floor and felt Camilla sit down beside her. 

_Open your eyes, Corona. Open your eyes and don’t you dare let one single tear fall. You will not cry here._

She opened her eyes and she did not cry. Her face remained blessedly dry. Camilla pushed a container of soup across the glass toward Corona, then set a chunk of bread beside the container. There was no silverware anywhere on the table, no dishes and no napkins. 

Ah see, there are still plenty of things that needed to be done. She was needed here.

Corona couldn’t hold herself back any longer. She reached for the soup, pulled off the lid and tipped the container to her lips. The soup was cold, but what did that matter? She was starving. She took three long gulps, swallowed the salt brine, hardly tasting it. Camilla sat beside her and waited patiently for Corona to finish the bread, to drink until the container contained nothing but a green film along its edges. 

“Is that Tern’s rapier?” Camilla asked. 

Corona started. “Oh this?” She glanced down at the sword, gripped the top of it with her right hand. “No, this is mine, actually.”

“I didn’t know you were a swordswoman.” Camilla the Sixth sounded a little impressed, but Corona felt hot and sick. Camilla’s dark eyes studied her and Corona tried to hold that gaze. 

“No,” Corona said, laughter bubbling up past her lips. “No, of course, I’m not.”

“But you have a sword.” Camilla sat back and her blunt hair fell back away from the handsome angles of her face. 

“It’s very pretty, isn’t it?” She tilted it to admire the shine. She laughed again. What else could she do? 

She didn’t want to talk about this with Camilla. She didn’t need another cavalier telling her exactly what she wasn’t and would never be. She was Lady Coronabeth Tridentarius, a Crown Princess of Ida, and she could bring an entire room to its knees with the gleam in her eye, with a flash of her teeth.

She would have made her sister an excellent cavalier.

“Now that she’s made it through the night, do you think there’s a chance for our Gideon?” Corona asked. A subject change was in order.

“I don’t know,” Camilla shrugged. Her eyes sipped toward the closed bedroom door, and her voice dropped a little as she continued. “I don’t see how it can last. People are capable of extraordinary things, but they’re usually short-lived. I’m afraid it’s just a matter of time.”

“I hope you’re wrong,” Corona said. She chewed at her bottom lip. The soup churned in her gut. “But don’t you think it would make the most sense -- that it would be the most beneficial for everyone -- if they simply finished what they started? All of this waiting, what if Gideon grows too weak and Harrowhark loses the possibility of ascension entirely?”

“Nah, she won’t do it now,” Camilla said with a firm shake of her head that made her hair dance around her face. 

“But why not? This isn’t like what happened with Babs,” Corona pushed. “Gideon the Ninth gave her life willingly. She wanted this for Harrowhark. Or have I misunderstood?”

“I don’t know,” Camilla admitted again. “There weren’t many other options. We were all about to die. What other choice was there?”

Naberius would have made a different choice. The things he said in those last minutes of his life! 

“Anyway, we don’t know what Gideon would have done if things had been different, we don’t know the Reverend Daughter,” Camilla said. “Neither of us do, really, but I’ve had more time in her presence than you have; enough time to say that she won’t try again, not even if it means death for the rest of us.”

Corona was bubbling, boiling, felt like she might burst forth from her own skin. She sat heavily back in her chair. She turned away from Camilla, pressed the palm of her hand to her mouth and discreetly bit into her flesh, not hard enough to break skin, just hard enough to stop herself from screaming. 

Nothing about this made sense. 

How had the Third not known what this was all about? One flesh, one end, and it was all so _obvious_ now. How had her parents been so blind? It made no sense to push Corona in a direction she was never meant to go, to force her to kneel at her sister’s side, to carefully match her sister’s movement, an intricately synchronized dance. It made no sense when they could have been so much _more_. __

_ _Watch your sister. Do what she does._ _

_ _And all of it for nothing. She should have fought harder. She should have practiced more. She wouldn’t have ended like Babs. She would have died willingly, she would have thrown herself on the sword just as Gideon Nav had done, and Ianthe wouldn’t have hesitated a second before she sucked her sister dry._ _

_ _If Coronabeth was ever meant to be anything, she was her sister’s cavalier. Her life had been stolen from her. It was never allowed to begin._ _

_ _Camilla was watching her, but when she finally spoke, she didn’t speak any of the words that Corona expected._ _

_ _“I don’t like this either,” Camilla said, her voice low. She leaned in toward Corona. “You saw what happened to Colum the Eighth.”_ _

_ _Corona hadn’t paid much attention at all to what happened to Colum the Eighth. She’d been occupied with other things, other thoughts._ _

_ _“Ianthe killed him?” she guessed._ _

_ _Camilla shook her head. “Octakiseron left Colum empty and the River filled him.”_ _

_ _The River. They all knew the warnings, the risks of siphoning too often or too long. A body left empty was an invitation. But surely --_ _

_ _Corona reached for Camilla, curled her hand firm around Camilla’s hard arm._ _

_ _“What happened to the Second?”_ _

_ _Camilla frowned. “They tried to call for aid and ended up fighting Teacher. Teacher was killed along with Marta the Second. Captain Deuteros was severely wounded.” Camilla paused and her dark eyes were wide when they met Corona’s. “Why? She couldn’t have survived.”_ _

_ _“I saw her,” Corona whispered. “Not far from the Ninth’s door. Her uniform was stained red, but -- Camilla, I’ve known Judith Deuteros my entire life. I’m certain that it was her.”_ _

_ _Camilla’s face went hard. She stood and walked to the overstuffed chair in the corner of the room, picked up a sword. It was one half of a matched set. After a moment of consideration, she picked up the other sword. She winced as the weight of it pulled at her shoulder, but she didn’t set it down. She sheathed them both across her back. She didn’t reach for the third sword leaning against the sofa. It was long and broad, a little dull with use. It looked heavy and Corona imagined Camilla trying to wield it, the stitches popping free of her skin under its weight._ _

_ _“Do you know how to use your rapier?” Camilla asked, seriously._ _

_ _"A bit,” Corona said. She stood._ _

_ _“All right. Then let’s go check on Captain Deuteros.”_ _


	5. Harrow

Harrow couldn’t remember the name of the moon that orbited the First. She used to know it; she remembered old Sister Phlerica sitting her in front of a map of planets and moons, Dominicus at its center, pointing to each colorful orb and waiting as Harrow obediently recited each name. That knowledge was gone now, buried or replaced by newer and more relevant information. 

Whatever its name, the moon bathed the bedroom in a soft glow, bright enough that Harrow could see the peaceful outline of Gideon Nav’s face, the slack set of her lips and the dark shadows beneath her chin. Bright enough that Harrow could see Gideon’s hand moving against the bedspread. The sound of the shifting fabric seemed loud in the quiet room, drowning out the soft sounds of Gideon’s breathing with a different sort of comfort. 

Harrow watched the fingers of Gideon’s right hand curl in toward her palm. They stayed like that for a long moment before they twitched back, hand spreading wide, fingers splayed, and then they relaxed again and settled back against the blanket. It was a gesture that Harrow had seen from Gideon many times before, the stretch of a hand that was gripping a sword and starting to cramp. Gideon would splay her fingers out like that in an almost necromantic gesture, and then shake her hand fiercely before tightening her gloves at her wrists and picking up her sword again. Round two. 

This started two days ago and Harrow was carefully keeping it to herself. Camilla would think it was too soon, would think it was impossible. Corona would -- who the hell knew what Corona might do? The Third claimed that Coronabeth Tridentarius was not a necromancer and never had been, but why should Harrow start to trust the Third now? Corona seemed awfully preoccupied with ascension for someone who insisted she no longer had any stake in this game. Harrow wasn’t taking any chances with Coronabeth Tridentarius. 

And none of that took into account the fear that lingered following the sudden appearance and just as sudden disappearance of Judith Deuteros, followed not long after by the slow return of the First’s skeletal servants. The River was on everyone’s minds.

Gideon’s left fingers started up, restless little movements. Harrow slid her own hand over Gideon’s, threaded their fingers together, Gideon’s hand making Harrow’s look tiny in comparison. After a moment, Gideon’s hand tightened against hers and Harrow was surprised and embarrassed by the pathetic choked sound she made, abrupt and so loud in the early morning quiet. 

The little movements started two days ago, but this was the first time Gideon responded to Harrow’s touch. Harrow’s heart was jumping in her chest and she knew she wasn’t falling back to sleep. 

It didn’t matter. The alarm on her watch, tucked carefully beneath her pillow, would surely start sounding any minute now anyway. 

Gideon’s fingers relaxed again, but Harrow didn’t pull her hand back. She held on.

“Griddle?” she whispered. “Gideon, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” She tried not to wonder if that could actually be a comfort to Gideon at this point. It had seemed that they’d -- but now, Harrow had no idea. Any level of understanding that they’d reached, any bond -- would it still be there after Gideon healed, or would they be back to the start? 

That would be okay. 

It would be a loss, and Harrow’s heart would hurt, might even break, but they’d made it a very long way to get to that moment once, whether Harrow deserved it or not, and if Gideon just _lived_, then with time maybe they could find their way back there. Harrow was willing to lose that progress if it meant not losing everything. She could handle losing Gideon’s trust again, Gideon’s friendship, if it meant Gideon’s life. 

Harrow pressed closer to Gideon’s side, stretched her body out along Gideon’s length until her toes hit against the piles of binders and boxes of flimsy she’d left stacked at the base of the bed, files that Camilla retrieved for her from the Lyctor studies they could still access. All keys except those that were in the possession of the Sixth or the Ninth had disappeared, the bodies of the dead along with them, with the apparent exception of the Second necromancer.

The alarm began to sound beneath Harrow’s pillow and Harrow released Gideon’s hand and fumbled to find the watch and turn it off. She had thirty minutes to get ready for the day.

**

Unlike the recent cavaliers of the Ninth, Camilla the Sixth was exceedingly precise. 

She knocked on Harrow’s bedroom door at exactly the same time each morning, down to the minute. Harrow never heard any sort of alarm sounding in the outer room, and Coronabeth was still asleep most mornings when Harrow slipped past her mattress and into the bathroom, so Camilla must be running on her own (or perhaps, more likely, the Sixth’s) internal clock. 

It would have driven Gideon, who couldn’t even handle the relatively lax routine of the Ninth’s bells, into a fit. It was a mild inconvenience for Harrow, whose heart still stalled when she remembered that final moment on the terrace, whose hand was loathe to leave its nightly resting place over the beating heart of her cavalier. 

At first, Harrow contemplated ignoring Camilla’s knock entirely. She was fairly certain now that Gideon’s outcome would be the same regardless of whether Camilla was allowed access. Harrow could watch and listen. She could drip spoonfuls of water into Gideon’s mouth. What difference were numbers scrawled into a leather book in the case of Gideon Nav?

Harrow always answered Camilla’s knock. She relied on Camilla (and grudgingly on Coronabeth) for everything, leaving Gideon’s side only when a visit to the bathroom became unavoidable. Of course she answered. 

Camilla helped Harrow without a second thought, without blinking. Harrow tried not to bristle when Camilla stepped in to help her with subjecting Gideon to the necessary daily indignities, with caring for someone who couldn’t care for herself. During those moments they tended to Gideon together with synchronicity and detached precision, changing bandages and clothes, wiping down Gideon’s unmoving body with a damp cloth. Camilla was professional, meticulous, incredibly punctual, and Harrow strived to be up and prepared before Camilla knocked, with the bed sheets smoothed around Gideon and the cavalier’s cot carefully rumpled, with her face appropriately painted. 

“Now don’t move, Nav,” Harrow warned her unresponsive cavalier. Any second now. She made sure she was ready, and when the knock inevitably came, right on schedule, she waited exactly five counts before she opened the door and let Camilla enter.

“Morning,” Camilla said, her voice clear and without even a hint of sleepy rasp. Harrow ached for Gideon’s disheveled head, goo and old paint gobbed up in the corners of her eyes, sleep heavy in her voice. Camilla set her bag on the bed beside Gideon, picked up Gideon’s wrist and began checking her pulse. Harrow stood at Camilla’s side and looked at the curl of Gideon’s fingers where they hung down from Camilla’s grip. There was no movement, not even a twitch.

Eventually, Camilla set Gideon’s hand down and recorded a number in the book kept permanently on the bedside table. 

She handed two glass bulbs to Harrow, who crossed to the other side of the bed. Harrow carefully tucked one of the bulbs up underneath Gideon’s left armpit. She pressed her thumb gently against Gideon’s chin and placed the second bulb into the space she’d created between Gideon’s lips. She waited the required ten seconds and then read the numbers out to Camilla. Camilla nodded and wrote them down in the book.

Now, unmoving, Gideon seemed largely unchanged. Her wounds showed no external signs of infection, her pulse remained steady, her breathing was regular. Her body ran warm, but never hot with fever. Camilla checked her temperature at least five times a day at the start, but after a few days with no change she dialed this back to once in the morning and once in the evening and she showed Harrow how to take the measurements herself. 

Camilla stopped and stared at Gideon, lying there with her shirt pushed up, her bandages unwrapped, and the healing wound exposed. Camilla’s eyes seemed to scrutinize every detail of Gideon, of the dark stitches, of her skin for hints of pallor, and Harrow nearly jumped out of her own skin waiting for this examination to end. It made Harrow itch to paint Gideon’s face, to cover her in the robes of the Ninth, to push Camilla from the room and tell her to mind her own fucking business. Camilla grew more suspicious of Gideon’s persistence to live by the day, and though she voiced this often, though she stopped and stared and tried to puzzle it out, she thankfully never once questioned Harrow’s actions or her resolve. 

Harrow, therefore, chewed at her lip and attempted to control her temper while Camilla completed strange little checks of Gideon’s state that they both knew had nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with the ghost of Deuteros, with the memory of Colum the Eight, and with a cavalier hanging on against all odds. Camilla carefully pushed back Gideon’s eyelids, checking the color of Gideon’s eyes with her face tense and her lips pressed tight. Gideon’s eyes remained unchanged, white sclera, yellow irises, and a spot of black that stayed in the pupil where it belonged. Camilla was always careful, smoothing a finger over Gideon’s closed eyelids afterward. 

“She needs to eat,” Camilla noted. She stood up and began placing her instruments back into the bag. Harrow adjusted the blankets, carefully arranged Gideon’s hands. If she was manipulating them, Camilla would not be able to tell if they moved on their own. Camilla continued: “Wetting her tongue with water shouldn’t be enough to keep her hydrated. She needs to be intubated. She needs -- “ 

“There’s no infection” Harrow cut it. “And she isn’t getting weaker. Your numbers show that she’s holding on.”

“They do,” Camilla agreed. Camilla frowned down at Gideon and then leaned in to check Gideon’s eyes again. Harrow caught Camilla’s hand to stop her.

“My cavalier isn’t an empty vessel,” Harrow said. “She hasn’t been displaced. Not by me and not by anything else.” 

Would a monster pulled from the River have held tight to Harrow’s hand? Would a revenant mimic Gideon’s gestures, stretching sword-cramped fingers? 

When this fear began, Harrow felt like she was trying to convince herself as well as Camilla and Corona. She’d felt Gideon fade there on the terrace, but how was she to know if that meant that Gideon was pulled back into herself or if her soul was lost out there somewhere with the Eighth? 

But now -- now Harrow was finally sure. Gideon was in there, and she would pull through.

**

Harrow was absorbed in a stack of files retrieved from the Sixth Lyctor study when Camilla knocked again. 

She looked up from the photograph she was studying. The picture presumably showed the original eight necromancers and their cavaliers. The Lyctor that murdered Dulcinea Septimus -- Cytherea? -- was visible, leaning against a tall robust woman with long dark hair pulled back away from her face. Harrow studied the other unfamiliar faces and wondered which four represented the two Lyctors they’d heard from beneath the floor of the facility.

Camilla knocked again and Harrow sighed and looked up at her cavalier. Gideon was the same; quiet, unmoving. She looked peaceful enough. Harrow was loathe to move from her position, stretched out along the length of the large four poster bed with her side pressed up against the long rideline of Gideon’s legs, but she was equally loathe for Camilla to see her so _comfortable_ beside her cavalier, so she stood and pulled at the blankets to smooth them, then ran her hands over the fabric of her robe. 

“Yes, come in.”

The door pushed open and Camilla appeared in the doorway flanked by an awake and dressed Coronabeth Tridentarius. 

“What is it?” Harrow asked, even less pleased to learn that this interruption involved the Third.

“We’re heading out to make our rounds,” Camilla said. “Do you need anything?” 

Harrow shook her head. That was not all they’d come to say. Camilla wouldn’t have bothered to knock if that was it; she would have just called out to Harrow from the other room. 

They stood there staring at each other for what felt like a very long time, but was surely less than a minute. Eventually Corona nudged Camilla in the side and Camilla cleared her throat. 

“The skeletons out there aren’t yours, are they?” Camilla asked. It was clear from her tone that she meant it as both a question and a statement; she knew in her gut that they weren’t Harrow’s constructs, but Harrow should be the only living necromancer left on the First, and they needed the verbal confirmation.

“Of course not,” Harrow scoffed, though even she understood that it was a question that had to be asked. 

While Harrow camped resolutely at the side of her cavalier, Camilla and Corona ventured out into Canaan House, out beyond the safety of Harrow’s bone wards. They gathered supplies, tended the gardens, searched for the Second. They hadn’t found her yet, but by the third day they were encountering skeletons in the large halls and in the corridors. If they hung back in the shadows, the skeletons went about their business, tending to Canaan House just as they’d always done. If they were spotted, the skeletons attacked, mean and vicious. 

Of course Harrow wasn’t housing Camilla and Corona within her quarters and then turning around and attacking them with constructs as soon as they left. It was a ridiculous idea. Still. She understood why they had to ask. There was a lot of abandoned bone lying around. 

“Is that all?” She directed the question toward Corona. She meant it as a dismissal, but instead of leaving, Corona stepped forward and placed a hand on Camilla’s good shoulder, her fingers folding over its curve. 

“Won’t you come with us and see them for yourself?” Corona asked in her usual breathy tone. Despite the entreaty in her voice, Corona’s hand on Camilla’s shoulder seemed possessive, as though she thought Harrow might choose to fight her over their last conscious cavalier. 

“That hardly seems necessary,” Harrow said, looking from Corona’s hand to Camilla’s face, which was as composed as ever and gave nothing away.

Corona continued: “A talented necromancer might see something that we’ve missed, something in their construction or their behavior that would point us toward their source.” 

It was a good point. And under any other circumstances, Harrow would be clamoring to get at these skeletons, she would be salivating at this new puzzle, this new trial. It had seemed that the previous bone servants were connected to Teacher and when the Second killed Teacher, the skeletons fell with him, but if they were back now --

She turned toward a stack of flimsy from the Sixth study and caught sight of Gideon lying there on her bed -- No, Harrow didn’t care if Canaan House was crawling with skeletons. The Ninth’s quarters were secured. The skeletons beyond could wait.

“I’ll deal with them once I’m sure my cavalier lives.”

It wasn’t the answer Corona wanted to hear. Her eyes narrowed slightly before she caught the slip in her expression and corrected. The words that came out of her mouth next were sharp and calculated and matched that flash of unguarded expression better than her careful mask. 

“I never would have guessed that the Ninth’s black vestals would be so weak as to balk at the Emperor’s triumph, to refuse His offered gift of ascension.”

“Weak,” Harrow repeated. She couldn’t help herself. She laughed. She laughed long and hard, the way Gideon sometimes used to laugh in her face, the way that used to drive Harrow into a rage.

“Reverend Daughter,” Camilla warned. “Princess Corona.” The titles sounded ridiculously formal considering their situation, the events of this past week. Camilla was trying very hard to keep to her station.

Corona’s hand tightened on Camilla’s shoulder, staving off the intervention. She waited for Harrow to stop laughing with a small smile pulling at her full lips. She was trying to look unphased. That was a mask too.

“It’s what you came here to do,” Corona said, eventually. 

“God, you’re really stuck on this, aren’t you,” Harrow said. “What is it to you, I wonder? Yes, it’s what we _all_ came here to do. And then we read the fine print. Only a monster would agree to such a thing.” 

Harrow’s parents would have done it. Not long ago, Harrow believed that she would do anything, that if faced with the same choices that her parents had, she would make the same decisions, but that was never actually the case. It was not true when Harrow was ten years old and watching their bodies swinging from the rafters and it was not true now. Harrow could not. Harrow knew now that she would choose Gideon Nav over the Emperor, over the Ninth, maybe even over the Tomb, each and every time.

Corona ignored the blatant jab at Ianthe and deftly deflected, going right to the heart of the issue. “So the Emperor, our King Undying, is a monster to you?”

“Perhaps He is,” Harrow agreed with a shrug. “The Ninth doesn’t receive many visitors, so unfortunately, we’ve never met.”

Corona pressed her lips together and nodded. Her hand fell from Camilla’s shoulder and went to rest on the hilt of the rapier strapped to her side. “Everything said about the Ninth is true then. You’re a cult of traitors.”

Ah. Wasn’t that funny? Everyone seemed to think the Ninth was packed with blasphemers and crawling with traitors. The Ninth never saw themselves as traitors. The Ninth believed that everything they did was in service to the Emperor… at least until Harrow opened the Tomb and stepped inside. At least until she watched her parents die with the word treason on their lips. 

“I was given the price and I found it too high,” Harrow said, carefully. “Get your hand off your sword.”

“Corona,” Camilla said, not bothering with the formalities now. “Stand down.”

Corona did not take her hand off her sword. “You’ll let us die here before you’ll do this one thing that could save us all.”

“Save us how?” Camilla asked at the same time that Harrow said, “Yes.”

“You see, Camilla? You were right.”

“Yes,” Harrow said again. She took a step toward Corona, her chin pushed up toward the taller woman. “I’d let you die. If it was between you and my cavalier, of course I’d let you die. What are you to me? Now get out and don’t come back until you’ve learned your place. Those aren’t my constructs, but I won’t hesitate to send an army after you if you try to interfere here.”

Corona’s eyes went wide. “I’ve been nothing but kind to you and to Gideon the Ninth since we arrived in this House.”

“Kindness was all you had,” Harrow snapped. “Your mask is slathered thicker than any of the Ninth’s paint. What good are you without that?”

It was then that Camilla’s face hardened, her entire body going still. For a split second, Harrow thought it was in response to her words, that Camilla had taken offense to Harrow’s attack on the Third, but Camilla wasn’t looking at Corona or at Harrow. She was looking past Harrow toward the bed, and Harrow felt her heart drop, felt her stomach turn. 

She spun back, fumbled for the twitching fingers of her cavalier, desperately convinced that she could still obscure the movement by checking Gideon’s pulse, by pretending that she thought Camilla’s reaction meant that Gideon had passed on.

“She moved,” Camilla said, stepping forward. 

No. She was too late. 

Camilla was beside her at the bed, reaching out for Gideon. She was going for Gideon’s eyes again, but before she could conduct her check, there was a musical scrape of steel behind them that could only mean one thing. Corona had drawn her sword. 

“It’s possessed her,” Corona said, the words coming out in a great gulping gasp.

She took a step toward the bed, rapier in hand, and Harrow snapped.

She pushed Camilla away from the bed, spread her palms wide, and focused. The bones hanging from the bedposts began to shake and six knuckles dropped to the floor. They immediately started to expand, the perfectly formed skeletons standing to their full height, ready to defend. 

Camilla ignored them and reached for Gideon again.

“Don’t fucking touch her!” 

The two closest skeletons grabbed Camilla, and Camilla hissed as bony hands pulled at her bad arm. She started to reach for one of her swords with her other hand, but paused halfway there. She turned toward Harrow, her dark eyes wide.

“Please don’t make me fight you,” Camilla begged. 

“You know what’s happening here as well as we do,” Corona accused. She still hadn’t learned when to keep her mouth shut. “Let Camilla check.”

“Get out,” Harrow said, low and final. She was done with the Third. The skeletons that weren’t holding Camilla closed in on Corona, pushing her back into the main room. Corona shouted in protest as she backed out past the door. 

The remaining skeletons held fast to Camilla. She didn’t fight their hold. She was quiet until she heard the sound of Corona’s struggle intensify in the other room, heard the sound of the outer door opening. 

“Pull yourself together, Nonagesimus. You can’t kick Corona out.”

“I can,” Harrow said. A drop of blood dripped down on her lip. She licked it away. “I have. You can stay, or you can go with her. Which will it be?”

Camilla straightened up and pulled back. She shook her good arm and one of the skeletons fell away. Harrow brought it back. “She’s going to get hurt out there.”

Harrow shrugged. “She has a sword. Doesn’t she know how to use it?”

“Yes, but --”

“Maybe she can charm the First’s bone servants with a bright smile and a wink,” Harrow suggested.

“Be reasonable.”

“I have been reasonable,” Harrow snapped. She sat down on the edge of the bed, her back to Gideon. She smoothed her robe over her knees. “You see? I am being very reasonable now. You’ve proven yourselves a danger to the Ninth. The Third drew on my cavalier and I won’t stand for it. Would you rather I challenge her?”

“If you do I’ll be forced to stand in her place,” Camilla warned.

Harrow looked Camilla up and down. “I can take you.”

Camilla looked up to the ceiling, probably cursing Sextus for leaving her behind to deal with this on her own. Harrow understood that sentiment. 

“Do you really think so?” Camilla eventually asked.

Harrow felt like she could take on the entire House to keep them from this room. In lieu of a response, she raised her eyebrows at Camilla, and began to fill the room with skeletons. Harrow had sharpened her teeth on exactly this sort of challenge. She had seen Camilla fight; she knew that Camilla was very good. Camilla the Sixth may even be better than Gideon, but then so was Harrow. If Camilla forced her hand, Harrow was sure that she could win.

Camilla took in Harrow’s army. This was the moment when Gideon exploded into action, sword swinging, bone bursting. Camilla the Sixth was not Harrow’s cavalier. She simply stood there amid the constructs and waited for Harrow’s next move. 

“Well?” Harrow asked.

Camilla shook her head. “Look, I get it. I really do get it, but if you’re wrong about this --”

“I’m not.” Harrow crossed her legs and leaned back slightly so that she could feel Gideon’s hip pressing against her lower back. 

“But if you are,” Camilla pressed.

“If I’m wrong I’ll deal with it,” Harrow said. “I’ll take care of it myself. But I’m not wrong.”

Camilla nodded, held her palms out in surrender. “For the record, I do hope you’re right. I hope that is Gideon moving around in there.”

“It is.” 

Camilla nodded again. She tilted her head back toward the door. “You’ve judged her too harshly.”

Harrow smiled. She felt confident surrounded by skeletons, with her cavalier pressed to her back. She felt like her old self, a version of herself that never saw her only friend willingly offer her life, purposely fall onto a spiked rail. Gideon’s fingers moving slightly against Harrow’s side and Harrow reached down and took Gideon’s hand in hers. 

“Not even Camilla the Sixth is immune to the Third’s charms?” 

“Maybe not.” Camilla shrugged. She maintained eye contact with Harrow through the jumble of bone that separated them now. “Could be worse. She’s probably not secretly a Lyctor set on destroying us all, is she?”

“No,” Harrow agreed. “Probably not that.”

Camilla sighed. “All right. I’m not going to change your mind. Just -- be careful in here.”

“I will,” Harrow stood. 

Camilla nodded and twisted her head back to look toward the door. She’d made her choice. Harrow released the bony hands gripping Camilla’s arms. When Camilla turned to leave, Harrow cleared a path and followed Camilla to the door. 

“Be careful out there,” Harrow said as she shut the door. She didn’t give Camilla time to look back. 

Harrow locked and warded the door to the Ninth quarters. She returned to the bedroom, shut and warded that door as well. Once that was done, she closed her eyes and released her army of constructs. 

The cloud of bone dust smelled like home.


	6. Camilla

Camilla stood in the center of the crumbling corridor outside the former sick room of Dulcinea Septimus and searched for the smallest sign that the Warden had ever been there. There had to be something left; a frayed bit of cloth, a broken lens from his glasses, his favorite pen kept eternally tucked into the pocket of his cloak.

She kicked at a pile of rubble with her boot and it fell with a heavy thump and an echoing clatter. Further down the corridor, Corona jumped, startled by the sound. 

“Sorry,” Camilla said. 

“No, don’t apologize,” Corona admonished. She smiled supportively and then turned back and resumed her watch. When Camilla asked Corona to give her a minute alone, Corona didn’t ask for an explanation, she didn’t press, and Camilla was grateful for that. Even now, in the wake of loss, Corona was capable of overdoing her sympathy, her voice positively dripping with emotion that could only be part of an elaborate act. She didn’t maintain the act now, spoke simply to Camilla instead, matter-of-fact. Don’t apologize. Camilla wasn’t ready to talk about this and Corona understood that, because neither was she. 

Corona just needed to carry her sword. Nonagesimus just needed control over her cavalier’s fate. And Camilla just needed to stand here for a while, just needed to take in whatever he’d left behind. 

Except that there was nothing left. Whoever ran the clean up here was meticulous. There weren’t even blood stains, not a trace. There must have been so much blood. It must have been -- 

It didn’t make sense. They cleaned up _everything_, all of the blood, all of the bits. They took the bodies and the keys. They locked the doors and they scrubbed away the stains. But the rubble was still here, strewn about in haphazard piles, spread across the floor as though it hadn’t been touched since it first fell. Camilla’s sword was still lying abandoned on the terrace when she went to retrieve it. Gideon’s sword was there too. They left the bones and the food and the weapons of the few people still alive. If Camilla broke into the Eighth’s quarters or the Fifth’s would she find the remains of the lives that slept there, or were those rooms cleared too? They’d been trying to break into the Second’s quarters for days without success. What would they find once managed to get in?

Based on what Camilla saw around her, it could only add up to one thing and Camilla didn’t like feeling like she was being played. She liked leaving the puzzles for Palamedes. She liked running support; she was good at that. She knew what she was supposed to do, and she was doing it. She _lived_, at least so far, but she needed --

Her eye caught on something within the rubble that she’d disturbed and she leaned down to pick it up. 

There it was. A tiny scrap of grey fabric that exactly matched the shirt Camilla wore now. It was small, no bigger than the pad of Camilla’s thumb, but it was unmistakable. It was all that was left, overlooked by the cleanup, buried beneath the debris. 

“We have to move,” Corona said, coming toward her at a brisk pace, her hair bouncing against her shoulders. “There are two coming. They haven’t seen me yet.”

Two skeletons weren’t a problem. They could knock them down and disappear before they managed to put themselves back together; but once they were seen it put every skeleton in the House on alert and it made the rest of their day a lot less pleasant. They weren’t necromancers and there were no wards on the doors to their rooms; the only place they could be sure they wouldn’t be found by the bone servants was in the facility, and neither of them were particularly keen on spending the day down there. There were no skeletons in the facility, but there was a whole lot of ominous who-knows-what-else.

“In here,” Camilla said. She shoved the scrap of fabric into her pocket and reached out to help Corona over a pile of rubble. Corona took Camilla’s hand without hesitation, though Camilla quickly realized Corona didn’t need her help at all. Corona stepped over the rubble with ease. Camilla tried to release Corona’s hand, a little embarrassed that she’d assumed the aid was needed, but Corona held on, took the lead and pulled Camilla into what little remained of Dulcinea’s old sick room. 

There was a hole in the wall and the breeze was cool in the room. The water was far enough below that the sound of it seemed distant, even pleasant. They took stock of the room and started across it in concert, both concluding that the closet in the corner was the obvious place to hunker down and hide. The closet was still remarkably intact; shelved and stocked with folded bed sheets and blankets. They crouched down at the base of the small room, pushed back into the shadows.

The rubble in the corridor rattled as the skeletons walked carelessly over and through it. One of them stumbled, sending bits of concrete clattering against the floor. They walked right into the room, and through the crack of the partially open door, Camilla and Corona watched as the skeletons began pulling torn sheets from the broken and collapsed bed. 

Corona reached out to touch Camilla’s hand and then nodded her head up toward the shelves of bedding. Of course. Of course this closet was their next destination. Of course they were going to try to place fresh sheets on a broken bed in a collapsing room. 

Camilla reached up and carefully pulled a blanket from the shelf. She huddled as close to Corona as she could manage, careful not to let her swords scrape against the walls or hit against Corona’s rapier. Corona helped Camilla unfold the blanket, and they huddled beneath it, obscuring their forms. It had to be enough. The skeletons weren’t looking for intruders. They were collecting laundry, making a bed. If they noticed the blanket-covered pile on the floor and decided to add it to their laundry pile, then Camilla and Corona would take them out and spend the rest of the day down in the facility; but they may not notice. They may not look down at all.

Camilla could feel Corona’s breath hot against her neck. The air beneath the blanket instantly began to feel humid, stuffy, and she tried to ignore it, tried to ignore the fact that Corona’s hand was absently resting high on Camilla’s thigh. She tried not to remember the hours she spent beneath the floor of the facility with Nonagesimus crouched over an almost certainly dying Gideon Nav. Instead Camilla contemplated rushing from the closet, drawing her swords and driving the skeletons out through the gaping hole Palamedes somehow managed to punch into the wall of Canaan House. If the skeletons fell out of the building and landed in the sea below, would that still set the rest of the House after them? Was there a terrace on the floors below this room that would catch them before they hit the sea? Camilla couldn’t remember.

The closet door opened and a skeleton shuffled about on the shelf above their heads. Corona’s resting hand turned to gripping instead, her fingers pressing hard into Camilla’s thigh. The door creaked shut and Corona relaxed. 

Camilla pulled the blanket from their heads and breathed deep. Now that the door was fully closed, they couldn’t see what was happening in the outer room. She couldn’t see much at all. Corona was just barely illuminated by the light seeping in around the cracks of the door. She was twisting a lock of hair around her finger. As Camilla watched, she brushed the blunt end of the twisted hair over her lower lip like it was a paintbrush applying lipstick. When she caught Camilla watching, she rolled her eyes and let the hair drop from her fingers. Her other hand stayed firm on Camilla’s thigh.

**

It was a beautiful day. The air was slightly crisp, but warm enough to be comfortable, and the sky was a perfect brilliant blue. They didn’t have days like this on the Sixth. Though to be fair, no day on the sweltering Sixth could be compared to a day on the First. Camilla had only been to the Third once with Palamedes when they were children, but she felt pretty safe in her assumption that there were no days like this on the Third either.

They sat on the edge of the terrace sharing cold soup and stale bread that they’d fought through kitchen skeletons to obtain. It meant another night spent down in the facility, instead of the Third’s quarters with half of the furniture piled up against the door, but the restock was necessary.

“Cheers,” Corona said and leaned in to knock her container of soup against Camilla’s. The green liquid sloshed about within but didn’t spill.

They’d chosen the terrace that led to the lobby with the facility’s hatch entrance as the most secluded place for their picnic. They’d been in Canaan House long enough now to observe that the skeletons rarely, if ever, came out here. They could relax a bit out here.

They ate in comfortable silence. 

They’d spent the morning trying to break into the Second’s quarters. They’d been trying for days, but so far Camilla had been unable to successfully pick the locks. Her fingers felt stiff and cramped and she pressed them back against her legs to stretch them out and relieve the ache. 

“Here, let me,” Corona offered. She set down what remained of her soup and took Camilla’s hand in both of hers. She began working over the back of Camilla’s hand with the tips of her thumbs, kneading carefully, a perfect pressure. She worked over the ridges and valleys of Camilla’s hand, pausing only to trace over the scars on Camilla’s knuckles left by years of combat training. Corona touched them carefully, reverently, and then moved on to Camilla’s fingers, a perfect twist and pull. 

“You’re a wizard,” Camilla said. “You’re magic.” And when Corona reached for her other hand, Camilla offered it eagerly. She fell back against the sun-warmed terrace, her body limp and relaxed under Corona’s ministrations. Corona laughed, and it sounded so good, so light. The perfect break from _everything_. Camilla could close her eyes and she could almost forget why there were there. She could almost forget that the Warden was gone, that she’d never be able to return him to the Sixth. 

Almost.

Corona covered Camilla’s hand with both of hers, the heat of her palms radiating through Camilla’s skin, warming her, relaxing her. 

When Corona finally let go, Camilla suddenly found herself unsure of what to do with her fingers. She shoved them in her pocket and her right hand found the scrap of cloth she’d buried there the day before. She pulled it out and held it pinched between her thumb and index finger.

“What is that?” Corona asked, but when she saw what it was that Camilla held in her hand, she pulled back. “Oh, I --”

“No, it’s okay. This is all that’s left,” Camilla said and held out the scrap of cloth. Corona carefully plucked it from Camilla’s hand. She examined it closely, pulling the fabric between her fingers.

Corona frowned down at the fabric, then looked over at Camilla with wide violet eyes. “This isn’t all that’s left,” she said. 

“I’ve been all over that corridor. That’s it.”

Corona shook her head. “There’s a whole room of his things,” she pointed out. “Where would Gideon have been without Sextus’s medical supplies? And that’s not even the best thing he left. Where would any of us be without Camilla the Sixth?”

She actually made it seem romantic, like it was all part of some grand design and they were exactly where they were meant to be. 

It wasn’t romantic, and Camilla knew Corona wasn’t as steady and sure in their current situation as she made it sound now. She knew Corona well enough by now to know that she could never truly think that a necromancer and a cavalier who didn’t ascend to Lyctorhood were exactly where they were meant to be.

“That isn’t how it was supposed to go,” Camilla pointed out, sitting up beside Corona. She couldn’t help herself from voicing it. Still. It was nice that Corona tried.

“No,” Corona agreed. “It hasn’t gone quite right for any of us, has it? You know, I was thinking about the past few days just this morning. I’m not sure you and I ever spoke a single word to each other before any of this happened and that just seems so strange to me now.”

Camilla took the bit of fabric back and shoved it into her pocket. Corona truly was a comfort. She clashed with Nonagesimus, but Camilla felt grounded by Corona’s presence and buoyed by her warmth.

“Well, if nothing else, I’m glad I’ve had time to get to know you,” Camilla admitted. 

Corona’s face lit up, and she leaned in. Her kiss was soft against Camilla’s cheek. Camilla wasn’t expecting it and she turned away to hide the flush that she felt bloom across her face. Corona reached out and smacked her arm.

“Camilla Hect,” Corona accused. “I’m surprised. You really know how to make a woman feel special.”

“That surprises you?” Camilla laughed. 

“It does,” Corona confirmed. “Pleasantly.”

“This is nice,” Camilla admitted. The food, the weather, the hand massage and the company. It was all really so _nice_. “Thank you.”

Corona blinked, surprised, and then broke into a slow smile. 

“You’re welcome,” Corona said. She opened her mouth to say something else, and then she changed her mind. She scrunched up her face and laughed, brilliant and beautiful.

Camilla couldn’t help but return the smile. “What?”

“I was going to say we should do it again sometime,” Corona said. “But then I remembered that we don’t have much choice!” She paused. “Well, I suppose you do have a choice, don’t you? You could dump me and return to Nonagesimus.”

They hadn’t heard a peep from the Reverend Daughter since being expelled from the Ninth quarters. Camilla made sure to go by the door to the Ninth’s rooms each morning. She knocked and asked Harrow if there was anything that Harrow needed. Harrow never answered, but her wards were still in place -- Camilla regretted conducting that test -- so she had to be in there, had to be alive. She’d run out of food, eventually. She’d need to venture out at some point. Camilla would continue to check in, but Nonagesimus aside, abandoning Corona out here was the very last thing on her mind.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Camilla promised. “You’re stuck with me for a while.”

“Good.”

**

Corona Tridentarius was trained on the rapier and knife; that much was clear. Her balance was good, her grip was correct as was her stance. She knew the correct motions, the footwork. What she lacked was not the knowledge -- Camilla was certain she’d studied the rapier more thoroughly than Camilla or Gideon the Ninth had ever done, both preferring to fight with other (superior) weapons. What Corona seemed to lack was a sparring partner, someone willing to go hard on her, to find her limits and push her beyond them. 

Camilla, therefore, did not go easy on her. They fought hard to cavalier rules, first touch, clavicle to sacrum, arms exception. Corona officiated. She was used to officiating matches, though it was obviously against form for her to officiate for herself. It didn’t matter. Corona was fair and correct, and when she called out “Corona the Third,” her face fell only a fraction before she recovered. There was no frustration in her tone each time she was forced to concede with a “Match to the Sixth!” 

They sparred until they were both out of breath, until their hands ached and their hair clung to their necks with sweat. They were too loud. Their shouts and their grunts would bring skeletons eventually and that was fine. They needed this. Another night hunkered down in the facility would be well earned; the fight beforehand would be worth it. 

“Match to the Sixth!” Corona announced, and Camilla pulled the tip of her sword back from Corona’s sternum. Corona did everything right and with perfect form. She simply wasn’t fast enough to beat Camilla. Not yet, but the potential was all there.

“You’ve read every cavalier’s manual, haven’t you?” Camilla asked. “More than once.”

“Of course.”

Camilla nodded at this confirmation. “Again?”

Corona’s eyebrows rose a quarter of an inch and then settled again as she smiled. 

“Again,” she said, but she didn’t step back. She didn’t get into position. She had a smudge of blue chalk dust on her cheek. She was breathing heavily, red and flushed. She was _radiant_, and as Camilla watched, rapt, Corona leaned in, coming just close enough for her breasts to graze gently against Camilla’s chest. Corona’s lips were parted, her eyes glazed. God, she was beautiful. She knew it, _oh_ she knew it, yet somehow when it came to Coronabeth Tridentarius that knowledge did absolutely nothing to dull her luster. 

Corona’s left hand settled on Camilla’s shoulder and then carefully trailed down the length of Camilla’s arm until her fingers settled over Camilla’s. She took hold of Camilla’s rapier and Camilla let her, entranced. Corona pulled it from Camilla’s hand and threw it to the floor. Her eyes were hot and bright, alight with the excitement of this new challenge. She took a step back and raised her sword, the point directed toward Camilla’s chest.

Camilla took stock of their surroundings, at the shut and locked doors to the training room, and then she thought _what the hell_. She and Corona were both adults, both trapped in the same shitty situation. Was it the smartest idea they’d ever had? No. But the Warden made her promise to live and he didn’t mean simply survive. He meant for her to _live_. So why not have a little fun? Why not wrap themselves in something hot and bright to keep the darkness at bay? 

_Not even Camilla the Sixth is immune to the Third’s charms?_

Camilla pushed aside the Reverend Daughter’s observation -- did it matter that she was right? There were moments when stepping outside the bounds of protocol, of expectation, was warranted. Camilla would allow herself this bit of selfishness, this balm, this comfort. 

She accepted Corona’s challenge and took a step toward the point of Corona’s sword. She took a second step forward and the tip of the rapier brushed up against the fabric of Camilla’s shirt. Corona’s aim was good. The rapier hovered over Camilla’s heart.

“Match to the Third,” Camilla said.

The corner of Corona’s mouth twitched, the right side threatening to break into a smile. Corona controlled the impulse. She took a step back. 

Camilla followed, matched the step back with a step forward, the point of Corona’s sword ghosting over her heart again and again and again until Corona’s back hit the wall of the training room and she gasped, surprised. 

Camilla was ready. She turned to her side, slid in past the point of Corona’s sword until her hand was on Corona’s. She pressed Corona’s sword arm to the wall, pinning her.

“Match to the Third,” Corona breathed, admittance that her challenge had played out exactly as she anticipated. Her eyes gleamed with a hunger that Camilla had no intention of denying. 

She kept Corona pinned to the wall as she leaned in, careful and slow, until Corona growled in frustration, done with the game. Her rapier fell from her hand as she surged forward, her lips finding Camilla’s in a greedy kiss. Triumph burst bright in Camilla’s gut.

Match to the Sixth.

Camilla had allowed herself to imagine kissing Corona only once, after their picnic on the terrace just days ago. She imagined it under the warming light of Dominicus. She imagined squinting in the sun, her kiss pressed carefully to Corona’s full lips. She imagined slow sensual kisses that gradually intensified with the press of tongues and the searching grip of fingers.

This was nothing like Camilla imagined. Corona was starving, seemingly had been for years. Corona’s kisses bruised with their intensity, with tongue and teeth, and hands that grabbed at Camilla, pulling her in closer, closer. Camilla pushed Corona back against the wall, her fingers on Corona’s neck, on her face, kissing her quiet, promising a prolonged feast, promising satisfaction. 

Corona threw her head back, gasping up at the ceiling, and Camilla accepted the offering, sucked at the smooth skin of Corona’s throat, savored the feel of Corona’s body shaking beneath her, the shudder when she carefully pressed teeth to shoulder. 

Corona would not be outdone. She bent her leg, her foot pressed back against the wall and her knee pushing insistently between Camilla’s thighs. Camilla moaned at the exquisite pressure, the perfect press of Corona up and against her. Corona, despite being the one pushed up against a wall, was once again completely in command; she had Camilla mumbling incoherently against her tongue in no time at all. Somehow she always seemed to know exactly what Camilla needed.

“Match to the Third,” Corona said again. She smiled against Camilla’s mouth.

“Match to the Third,” Camilla agreed. She kissed Corona, savored the sharp press of Corona’s teeth to her lower lip. 

They forgot where they were; forgot that they’d been testing fate the entire afternoon. They forgot the threats outside their door, forgot those hollow knots of loss in their guts, forgot the scrap of fabric in Camilla’s pocket. They didn’t hear the skeletons piling up behind the training room doors. They didn’t hear the knock of bone against bone or the turn of a key in the lock. Camilla Hect -- always prepared -- was taken completely by surprise, without weapon in hand, when the doors burst open and an army of bone rushed in. 

Their swords were on the floor. Their knives thrown aside. Completely unprepared. The antithesis of everything Camilla had ever learned on the Sixth. 

This must be what it felt like to live.

She sprang into action. Camilla kicked the nearest skeleton hard, pushing it back into the three directly behind it so that all four fell to the ground in a pile. It gave her just enough space and time to grab Corona’s rapier and press it into Corona’s hand.

“Cover me,” she said. 

Corona nodded, ready. Her lips were red, swollen, but her eyes were hard. She shouted in rage as she advanced on the line of approaching bone. 

Camilla rushed for her own rapier, slid against the dust of the training room floor, fought and pushed and punched hard unyielding bone until her hand found the hilt. It would have to do. Her two swords were a sea of skeletons away. A rapier was made to fight flesh. It was a stupid weapon against an army of bone. 

They made it work.

They fought their way out of the training room, spilling out into the larger hall, dominated by the still-full swimming pool. Corona pushed a row of skeletons up to the edge and they fell back into the water one after the other. 

Camilla bashed the hilt of her sword into a rib cage and then looked back to find that the broken skeletons on the training room floor were already beginning to reassemble. It was a swarm. There were too many to take down before the others rose again. They were too resilient. 

“We have to get to the hatch!” Corona snarled back in agreement and they began their push toward the doors.

They were nearly there when Corona began to shout words that Camilla couldn’t understand. She turned toward Corona -- the wrong move -- only to find Corona wide eyed and staring back past Camilla, back toward the windows, finger pointing, and waving Camilla away. Now that Camilla could see Corona’s mouth form the words, she could understand what she was saying.

“Judith! It’s Judith!” 

Deuteros was strong and fast, and she was on Camilla in seconds, fingers wrapping around Camilla’s neck, choking off Camilla’s shout. 

“You don’t have clearance,” Captain Deuteros sneered. Her voice sounded ragged, blown. She shoved Camilla hard, and Camilla tripped over the raised edge of the pool and fell, plunging into the water, salt stinging her nose and throat. 

Several skeletons grabbed for her, and she tried to push them off, but more hands seemed to emerge from nowhere, from the depths of the pool, pulling her down. She heard a splash and turned to find that Deuteros was in the water beside her, her hands reaching out to press against Camilla’s head. Skeletal hands pulled at her rapier and she yanked it back, but the water made it come away too slow, and the bony fingers held fast. Camilla thrashed, her teeth snapping, trying to catch at the Second’s flesh. She missed and was pushed under by too many hands, her mouth filling with water before she realized she’d lost the air. She pushed up from the bottom of the pool and breached the surface, coughing up salt and sucking air back into her lungs.

“You don’t have clearance,” Deuteros repeated, her voice a painful scratch, nothing like the voice Camilla remembered before everything went to shit.

Unlike the Second, Corona’s lungs were full and healthy and she let loose a scream that startled the skeletons and rattled the old windows. Even Camilla started, but Deuteros ignored the screaming, held on, her fingers clamped around Camilla’s neck. Camilla saw Corona fighting, desperately pushing against the hoard, struggling to reach Camilla and the edge of the pool, and then Deuteros pushed Camilla back below the surface of the water while Camilla fought and kicked. 

The Second was too strong. There were too many skeletons in the water, in the room, on the First. Camilla’s eyes blurred and her chest burned. 

Above her Corona screamed and screamed.


	7. Harrow?

Canaan House fell and swallowed them whole.

“Anyone there?” she asked -- tried to ask -- moved her mouth to ask, but there was no sound, just ringing in her ears, a metallic screaming, and then she was trapped, her chest burned and her legs were pinned. Canaan House fell and buried them alive.

No. That wasn’t how it went. 

Canaan House was still standing. Canaan House stood and Harrow screamed, tears washed away her facepaint in dramatic streaks. Bone rained down in painful shards that tore at cloth and skin before clattering against the stone of the terrace, thunking against the weathered wood. Dulcinea Septimus shrieked and her hands ached from the grip on her sword. Harrow's muscles screamed with the weight of it.

And then it all faded. 

Canaan House didn’t fall, but she was still trapped. It didn’t feel like rubble. This weight was pointy and jabby. The remains of the bone construct? No, couldn’t be. There was the pointy and jabby factor sure, but this was somehow warm and soft at the same time. That didn’t seem possible and yet -- it had to be rubble. Bone, maybe. Harrow’s protective bone shell, the remains of Cytherea’s bone beast, or -- no. That couldn’t be it either. Bone was pointy and jabby, but never soft or warm. The Ninth was the coldest, darkest, pointiest place she could imagine. Never soft or warm. But this -- this weight felt living, like… fuck, her head was full of fucking fuzz -- like a fucking living thing lying on her legs. A living thing with pointy corners. 

She tried to wiggle her toes. Did they move? She couldn’t tell. She _could_ feel her legs, though. That had to mean her toes were fine too. Although -- were they her legs? Maybe they were Harrow’s legs. Maybe she was feeling weight on Harrow’s legs from somewhere inside of Harrow’s body. One Flesh. 

Freaky.

_Harrow?_

She waited. Nothing. Okay, good. Harrow hadn’t invaded her mind. Except this was _Harrow’s_ mind. No -- Fuck, this was really very stupid. It had felt so _right_, her muscle memory guiding Harrow’s hands on her sword, the combined power, they were so _close_ \--

Her hand ached and she stretched it and felt the strain in her fingers. 

She should try to open her eyes. Had she tried that yet?

Fuck! No, oh, _fuck_, it was bright. She squeezed her eyes shut again, white blotches strobing against the inside of her eyelids as she tried to register what her eyes had seen before Dominicus tried to melt them. It didn’t make sense. She squinted one eye back open, just barely, just enough so she could take in black draped fabric and a hanging string of knucklebones.

Yeah, okay, that was what she’d seen the first time too. Okay. _Okay_. So. She was in Harrow’s body in Harrow’s bed, looking up at Harrow’s ceiling through Harrow’s eyes. Fucking freaky as shit. She clearly didn’t think through what she was signing up for. How could she? There’d been no time. 

Okay, that was fine. It was done and she was here. So where was _Harrow_?

_I know you’re in here. Answer me, bitch_.

Nothing.

She cleared Harrow’s throat, intending to repeat the order aloud, but the throat clearing turned into a cough and the cough set off a pain that flared through her chest. The weight on her legs yelped in alarm and threw something that landed with a thump on Harrow’s stomach and pushed another painful cough from her throat. 

The warm and pointy weight spoke. 

“Griddle?” it asked in a distinctly Harrow voice.

The weight lifted from her legs and scrambled up the bed until it materialized in front of her one squinting eye. She closed the eye, turned her head, and groaned.

When she opened it again, Harrowhark Nonagesimus was still there.


	8. Gideon

It took an absolute literal thousand years before Gideon finally found her voice. In those literal thousand years, Harrowhark Nonagesimus gazed down at Gideon with damp eyes and a strange expression of wonder that was frankly very unsettling. She pressed a hand to Gideon’s face, and her hand wasn’t cold and clammy the way Gideon always expected it to be. Her palm was warm against Gideon’s cheek. And then Harrow smiled. Harrow actually _smiled_, her mouth stretching wide and her cheeks balling up at either end, with her crooked little bone chip teeth exposed -- the real ones, not the ones she usually drew onto her face. She hadn’t drawn anything on her face now; it was the pasty pale of her bare skin. 

“What the fuck?” Gideon finally managed. Her voice came out in a puff of breath, a hoarse whisper that scratched at her throat and set her coughing again. Harrow reached for her and Gideon attempted to pull back, but there was nowhere to go and her limbs felt absolutely ancient and creaky. This must be what it was like to inhabit the body of Marshal Crux. 

Oh, someone kill her now. 

Wait, no, she’d already tried that. How the hell had Harrow managed _this_? 

“What the fuck did you do?” She glared at Harrow, but she wasn’t sure that really came across considering how much she was still squinting in the ridiculously bright light of the room. 

“What did I do?” Harrow repeated. Her smile faltered. She reached for Gideon’s hand and held it tight between both of hers. “I’ve been waiting. I --”

Gideon looked down at Harrow’s hand holding hers and said, “So we’re dead?” It made more sense than any other explanation she had. “Where are my shades?”

“What, no?” Harrow released her hand and when Harrow pulled away and stood from the bed, Gideon caught herself reaching out to pull Harrow back. She shut her eyes and groaned, forced her hand back down to the bed. Harrow pulled the heavy drapes closed, blocked out the blinding light, and Gideon groaned again, this time with relief.

Gideon’s throat hurt, but she kept talking -- “Are you a Lyctor?” -- had to keep talking if Harrow was going to climb back on the bed like that, if she was going keep a grip on Gideon’s hand like that, was going to press it against her -- Harrow’s chest wasn’t strapped beneath bone and Gideon remembered that bird-thin body pressed against hers in the corner of the pool. And now Harrow pressed Gideon’s hand to her chest and didn’t shrink away, looked instead like she wanted more than anything to pull Gideon even closer. Gideon shook her head to clear it, ignored the fact that her fingertips were touching Harrow’s bare skin, right above the collar of her shirt, right at the base of her neck. 

“No,” Harrow said carefully, but Gideon ignored her, kept talking anyway.

“Is this some kind of visit your Lyctor hours?”

“No.” Harrow repeated. She pressed a hand to Gideon’s forehead, pushed Gideon’s hair back. She looked like she might lean in, might press a kiss to Gideon’s cheek or her forehead or, God forbid, the bridge of her nose, if Gideon didn’t --

“What the fuck happened then?” Gideon cut in. Harrow sat back.

“I don’t know.” She waved to the bed, to the thick binder of flimsy that she’d thrown at Gideon’s stomach, to the piles of books by Gideon’s feet. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.”

Gideon was surprised to find that mixed in there with the confusion and a flush of panicked warmth at Harrow’s proximity, she also actually felt pretty offended. She felt rejected. She felt a surge of adrenaline and took advantage of that sudden rush of strength to push off the heavy blankets that were tucked carefully around her. She pulled up her shirt, her hands scrabbling over the white bandage taped tight to her chest.

“You patched me up?” Gideon asked, and then again: “What the fuck, Harrow?”

“Yes,” Harrow said in a tone that sent Gideon straight back to the Ninth, to Drearburh and the stink of bone and mildew, to the painted face of the Ninth’s Lady. Harrow cleared her throat, and started again, in the softer tone that Gideon only discovered Harrow capable of after a cuddle in a pool. “Well, yes, I helped, but -- that was primarily the Sixth.”

“Thank God,” Gideon breathed and fell back onto the bed. Harrow turned Gideon’s hand in hers, began kneading her fingers against Gideon’s palm. Shit, that felt good.

“The Sixth teach you that too?” Gideon asked. She couldn’t think straight. Her chest was bandaged, Harrow was massaging her fucking hand, the not-dead-the-last-time-Gideon-saw-her half of the Sixth was apparently alive and kicking, and they were still here at Canaan House, Gideon and Harrow together in Harrowhark’s bed. Together in Harrowhark’s bed. Gideon wanted to laugh, but she had a feeling it would really fucking hurt. 

Harrow chose not to answer Gideon’s question about the hand massage. She also didn’t look pinched and sour about the fact that Gideon had asked, which was new. Instead Harrow looked concerned and a little like she’d just been electrocuted. 

“Where is the Sixth?” Gideon asked, because it seemed like an important question and because Harrow was once again looking like she might decide to lean in for a hug or something at any moment. Gideon wasn’t averse to hugs, not even to hugs from Harrow. Some things really had changed, but this was still so -- she couldn’t think about hugs yet. Couldn’t think about Harrow gazing at her face and leaning forward with dark hot eyes and parted lips. “Is Camilla here?”

Harrow paused and for a moment Gideon thought she would refuse to answer that question too. But, no. This apparently wasn’t the same Harrow that Gideon remembered from the terrace, from the Ninth. This Harrow wanted to talk with Gideon and was willing to answer her questions.

“I kicked them out,” Harrow said, and she actually flushed when she said it, like maybe she was just a little bit ashamed. What the hell had happened while Gideon was dead? Mostly dead? “Well, I kicked the Third out. Camilla chose to go with her.”

“Wait, the Third? Not --”

Harrow shook her head. She wasn’t wearing her hood or her veil and Gideon caught herself watching the way her dark hair moved with the gesture. “No, not Ianthe. She’s gone.”

“Dead?” Gideon asked, hopeful. She slipped her hand from Harrow’s, reached up to pull a strand of hair from Harrow’s cheek. 

Harrow let her, merely shrugged. “Probably not.”

“Okay,” Gideon said. “Okay, so Coronabeth and Camilla are here somewhere. That’s it?”

“Judith Deuteros,” Harrow said, then screwed up her face and shrugged again. “Well, maybe.”

Gideon mulled this over for a moment, remembered Deuteros bleeding in a chair. “Deuteros was as good as dead.”

“So were you,” Harrow countered. 

“I don’t understand what I’m doing here.”

Harrow reached for Gideon’s hand again, held it tight as she leaned forward. Her eyes were aglow with that old intensity that Gideon associated with broken bones and a bruised heart. 

“I’m trying to work that out,” Harrow promised. “But Griddle, I’m glad. I’m really very glad you’re still here.”

It was too much, and Harrow looked like she might say something more, might make some proclamation that would change everything. Gideon couldn’t hear it, not yet, not while she was stuck here in this bed with Harrow hovering over. Gideon felt her own words, her own proclamations bubbling in her gut, felt like if she didn’t say them, if she didn’t push them up through her throat they might ooze out through the hole in her chest instead. I gave _everything_ for you. I gave myself _to_ you. 

“You are completely incapable of letting me go,” Gideon accused. “You can’t even let me _die_ correctly.”

**

Gideon stood in front of the mirror with her arms propped against the sink. From the shoulders up, she looked just the way she always had: Gorgeous, obviously. There was just a hint of an old bruise fading on her left cheek. Hot. Her shoulders, yes, good. Biceps needed a bit of work. Breasts, yeah, still there, still fine. And then below her breasts thick strips of white cloth taped to her skin. The skin around the bandages was marred by darker lines where replaced pieces of tape had left a sticky, hard to remove residue. She could feel that there was another thick square of cloth taped against her back. She couldn’t reach that one well enough to do anything about it, though she could see it enough to confirm its presence when she twisted in front of the mirror. That hurt though, so she stopped doing that, chose to ignore that for now, stared at the bandage on her torso instead. 

She tried to imagine how it went after she fell, how she’d made it from that last moment when she was _there_, closer to Harrow than she’d ever been or known she’d wanted to be, truly understanding her purpose for the first time as she helped to guide her sword with Harrow’s hands. From there to waking up in Harrow’s bed with Harrow hovering over her, back to understanding absolutely nothing and no one.

What had Harrow done? Of course, Harrow must have done _something_. Gideon gave herself up willingly. She _wanted_ it. She heard Harrow’s words, “first flower of my house” and “greatest cavalier” and “our triumph.” Her heart felt like it might burst in her chest, and it wasn’t just the fact that they were facing imminent death. It was more than that. Gideon _knew_ what she had to do. She was resolute, absolutely committed, not a doubt left in her head when she threw herself down onto the spikes. How had Harrow reversed it? 

Gideon yanked the bandage from her torso, hissed at the sting of the tape pulling away from her skin. She stared at the mess of blue thread that held her together. Cam’s work, surely. There was no way Harrow knew her way this well around a needle and thread. Gideon ran her finger over the raised ridge of it, the three spidery limbs. She pressed her breast to the side so she could get a really good look at it, at the placement. She’d aimed for her heart and she’d clearly missed. Too low, but it was still a rusted spike through the chest, through the gut. It still should have killed her. 

She ran her hands over her limbs, felt for bits of bone embedded beneath her skin, anything that may indicate that Harrow was up to old tricks. She found nothing. What was more, she sniffed her right armpit and was surprised to find that she smelled remarkably fresh, as though she’d bathed that very morning, hadn’t been lying in a bed for weeks, marinating in her own sweat and blood and stink. Gideon closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against the glass of the mirror.

How the fuck was she supposed to look Harrow in the face knowing that Harrow had done some strange dark necromantic work on her, that Harrow had been bathing her naked comotose form? How was she supposed to hold her head up now that she had questions about where the fuck she’d been emptying her bladder all this time?

Oh, Harrow should have let her die. This was so so much worse.

She banged her head against the glass. Once, twice, and then she squeezed her eyes shut as hard as she could, until white lines flashed and her skin ached. She took a deep breath and pushed herself away from the sink.

Outside the bathroom, Harrow tapped against the door.

“Nav? Are you all right?”

The old tins of paint were stacked on a shelf beside the sink, white and black thumbprints smeared all over the containers. Gideon grabbed one, black, and brought it to her nose, inhaled its acid scent and remembered the taste of it on her lips.

“I’m going to open the door,” Harrow warned.

Of course Harrow was going to open the door. Gideon had nearly fallen out of the bed, had cried out at the sharp pain that sliced through her, the half-healed hole in her middle that wouldn’t allow itself to be forgotten. When Harrow rushed to her side, hands everywhere, checking and pulling, Gideon pushed her away and stumbled to the bathroom, finding her footing as she went, so that by the time she was across the Ninth’s quarters she was walking like a firmly formed person instead of lurching like the clumsy bone constructs Harrow raised in their youth.

“I have to take a piss,” she’d said as she slammed the door in Harrow’s face and began pulling off her clothes. 

“I’m coming in,” Harrow announced again then. The doorknob started to turn, then stopped as Harrow contemplated whether she was actually going to follow through. “Gideon?”

“Yeah,” Gideon said, unable to resist Harrow calling her by her actual name, unable to stop herself from feeling desperate to stave off the note of panic she heard in Harrow’s voice. She grabbed her shirt and pulled it on over her head. “Come in.”

Harrow opened the door, but didn’t step inside. She was barely recognizable without her face paint, naked though she was fully clothed. Her eyes looked strange and big without circles of black paint around them, wide and dark as they surveyed the scene in the bathroom. They caught on Gideon’s face, and they froze like that for a moment, necromancer and resurrected cavalier. Something was tingling in Gideon’s chest, in her shoulders and her arms. She clenched and unclenched her hands, rubbed her palm over her forearms, plucked at the hairs just below her elbow.

“I think I might have nerve damage,” Gideon said once the tingling reached her toes. She was sure it wasn’t nerve damage.

Harrow looked away first, down at the discarded bandage beside the sink. There was a sticky spot of pale yellow in the center of the cloth. She stepped into the bathroom and picked up the bandage. When she reached past Gideon to place it in the bin, their arms brushed and Gideon shivered.

“We should cover it again,” Harrow said. “The Sixth’s been worried about infection.”

“It’s fine,” Gideon said. “It hurts, but it looks good. It’s fine.”

Harrow nodded. “We should still cover it.”

Gideon pressed her mouth tight on an entire list of available retorts. Instead she nodded and started pulling off her shirt, eyebrows raised. 

“What are you doing?” Harrow cut in, shrill notes that gave her away completely. One would think that the reunion of two people who had gone through what Gideon and Harrow had gone through would be -- Gideon wasn’t actually sure what she thought the reunion of two people who had gone through what Gideon and Harrow had gone through would look like other than this. If those two people weren’t Harrow or Gideon, it might look a lot different. It might look like Abigail Pent and Magnus Quinn holding each other tight and reconnecting with loving kisses, or it might look like Ianthe Tridentarius and Naberius Tern sneering at each other and trying to do the other in the first chance they got. It might look like Jeannemary Chatur and Isaac Tettares crying in each other’s arms. Or, in the case of Gideon Nav and Harrowhark Nonagesimus, it might be a continuation of that same awkward dance they’d been dancing for decades, the one that now felt strange and fraught because it had lost that old and easy seething hatred.

Harrow held up a new bandage and gestured for Gideon to follow her. Gideon felt a bit of relief at this, immediately stopped thinking and started following. Her legs were working better now, though they felt kinda wiggly and unsure, like she could easily trip and fall on her face at any moment. She paused to test, to squat and then feel the slight shake in her thighs when she stood back up. She did it again and while down in her squat her eye caught on the most beautiful sight: her sword! Her sword was right there, leaning against the wall, gorgeous, sexy! Harrow must have dragged it back after the battle with Cytherea and in that moment Gideon really could kiss her! 

She didn’t. Insead she lunged toward her old friend. Well, okay, so lunged was _maybe_ too generous a word for the movement. Okay, so she fell forward, caught herself with her arm, ignored the stab of pain as her giant chest wound cried out in protest, and then proceeded to crawl toward her sword, all while ignoring Harrow’s cries of surprise and frustration.

She ran the tips of her fingers carefully over the metal and gasped at the feel of it. Oh, reunited! It felt _so_ good.

“Nav?” Harrow said from behind her, and Gideon ignored Harrow, focused on the feel of her hand as it wrapped around the hilt of her sword. She stood and lifted it, laughed at the familiar weight of it, the delicious heft. Sure, it made the middle parts of her body ache to hold it, but it was so worth it. She turned to show Harrow, couldn’t help the grin that stretched across her face. 

Harrow didn’t look all that impressed, simply tipped her head toward the sofa and raised her eyebrows pointedly.

Right. Bandages. 

Gideon surrendered herself to the sofa without further delay. She brought the sword with her, carefully lay it down beside her, keeping one hand on the hilt.

“Is that supposed to be a threat?” Harrow asked. It was a surprisingly comforting question. Gideon answered it with a groan.

“Come on, Harrow. My _sword_. I’ve missed her.”

“Do you two need some alone time?” Harrow asked, eyebrows still high enough that they must be giving her a headache by now. Her mouth looked like she’d just sucked on a pickled leek. Gideon still felt a little like she might want to kiss that mouth.

“Just let me hold her a bit.”

“Mm, well, just don’t pull anything heaving it about,” Harrow warned. She pushed Gideon’s shirt up as though it was nothing, as though Gideon’s stomach was old news, no more interesting to Harrow than a pile of oss was to Gideon. Granted, Gideon hadn't done a single sit up, crunch, or push up in weeks, so her torso was far less impressive than it might have been, but it was still a _very_ nice torso. Old news to Harrow. And Gideon had completely missed the part where it was very new news, which was absolutely unfair.

“You’re very familiar,” Gideon pointed out, couldn’t resist. “This magnificence is clearly old news to you.”

“I’ve done a very good job of dissociating when necessary,” Harrow murmured, as she leaned down to examine the state of Gideon’s stitches. 

So she didn’t disagree on Gideon’s magnificence then.

When Harrow’s fingers came in to trace a line beside one branch of stitches, Gideon’s felt her skin light up with the touch. She tightened the grip on her sword. Harrow might be a pro at dissociating when Gideon was comatose, but when Gideon’s stomach twitched a little at the touch of Harrow’s hand, Harrow nearly choked on her own tongue and had to close her eyes for several seconds to compose herself. The flush on her unpainted face might have brought to mind pictures Gideon had seen of overripe tomatoes before, but now it delighted her. It made Harrow look more alive than she’d ever seemed to Gideon before. It was beautiful.

Harrow cleared her throat and then ripped a piece of tape with her teeth. She was careful not to meet Gideon’s eyes, careful to look anywhere and everywhere else. She pressed the tape carefully to Gideon’s skin, smoothing it down with two fingers. She cleared her throat again.

“Even if it had worked, that wouldn’t have been letting you go,” Harrow said, her words calm and measured in a way that told Gideon that Harrow had thought of little else since Gideon stood from the bed and lurched to the bathroom. “That was consuming you.”

“Yeah,” Gideon breathed, not yet recovered from Harrow’s touch. “We wouldn’t want that.” Harrow had spent her whole life trying to wear her down and grind her into dust. Harrow had spent her whole life trying to break Gideon. “You spent your whole life trying to consume me back on the Ninth. It was only the entire point of everything.”

Harrow sat back. Her mouth gaped a little, then snapped shut before falling open again. She looked like the fish that the First’s bone servants kept in a large tank in the kitchen. Gideon spent an entire afternoon watching them swim back and forth, sucking water into their round little mouths.

“You’re actually mad at me about this,” Harrow concluded, finally. 

Gideon sucked her tongue and took a deep breath. “I am feeling a little rejected, yeah.”

“Rejected?” Harrow laughed, her face suddenly a mask even without any paint, a hardened haughtiness in her voice. “Nav, _you_ are the one that rejected me. If anyone should be upset, it should be the necromancer whose cavalier failed to follow through.”

“Not on purpose! I was fully committed. I offered myself to you on a spectacular serving platter, garnish and all. I -- wait, are _you_ actually upset?”

“Of course not, you idiot,” Harrow said. Her mask crumbled instantly. The flush returned. She blinked several times, fast, and then finally _finally_ looked Gideon in the eye. “I’ve never been so relieved and yet so frustrated by a person at the same time.”

That gave Gideon pause. Of course, Harrow’s relief was obvious the moment Gideon came to, but until this moment she hadn’t stopped to think about what Harrow had been through these last few weeks. She was thinking about it now. What’s more, she was thinking about how she would be feeling if their positions were reversed, if she’d spent these last weeks trapped in Canaan House with a necromancer that was barely hanging on. She’d spent nearly twenty years imagining every possible way that Harrow might die and how Gideon might help expedite the process, but now the thought of Harrow that _close_ makes her blood run cold, makes her heart flutter and her stomach turn.

And Harrow. Harrow watched her parents kill themselves. She watched Mortus the Ninth follow. And then her own cavalier --

Okay, so Gideon was an absolute ass. No question about that. A completely unforgivable jerk. Harrowhark Nonagesimus had cornered the market on performative mourning, but that was not what greeted Gideon when she woke up in Harrow’s bed. There were no veils or clicking knucklebones, no paint or blood dripping from Harrow’s nose. There was just Harrow, bare face and with that relieved and incredulous look in her eyes. Gideon was a fucking idiot. A total buffoon. Harrow’d been right all those years.

“Come here,” Gideon said. She let her sword drop to the floor as she sat up. She could apologize for that later. She opened her arms to Harrow, beckoned her closer.

“Why?” Harrow asked, instantly wary.

“Harrow.” Gideon said. She reached for Harrow, pulled her bodily in and wrapped her tiny frame in a tight hug. Harrow struggled, an ingrained reflex at this point, but when she nearly pressed her hand to Gideon’s stitches, she caught herself and stopped, surrendered, wrapped her arms around Gideon in return. Harrow pressed her face to Gideon’s shoulder and Gideon felt the hot wet pulses of Harrow's breath through the synthetic fabric of her shirt. After a moment, Harrow began to shake, and the hot wet pulses of Harrow’s breath became noticeably wetter.

Gideon nuzzled her face against the top of Harrow’s head, pressed her nose into Harrow’s hair. “Are you crying?” 

“Fuck you,” Harrow gasped against Gideon’s shoulder. “Fuck you. How can you sit here making jokes and acting like it was _nothing_? I thought -- I -- “ 

“I’m here,” Gideon assured her. Harrow’s fingers dug into Gideon’s arms, fingertips sharp like claws, hard enough to hurt. “I’m here, okay? I’m the absolute worst, the biggest idiot, but I’m here.”

“Don’t you ever _ever_ \--”

“Okay,” Gideon said. She kissed the top of Harrow’s head. 

Okay must have been close enough to what Harrow needed to hear. She made a small strangled choking noise against Gideon’s shoulder and then her fingers loosened their grip on Gideon’s arms. She pulled back from Gideon’s shoulder just far enough to see Gideon’s face.

“Okay?” Harrow asked. 

“Okay,” Gideon agreed. “I won’t _ever_.”

Harrow thought about this for a long time, her dark eyes darting back and forth. If this was a year ago, if they were on the Ninth, this would be the moment that Harrow pulled a fistful of bone chips from nowhere and began to sprout constructs. This wasn’t a year ago, and they weren’t on the Ninth, and there were no bone chips in Harrow’s hands now.

“Okay,” Harrow said, instead. “Good. Because if you do _ever_, I will personally resurrect your bones with the skin still attached and I will drag you through the oss pits of the Ninth. I will have the nuns call you back and force you to watch. I will summon a resurrection beast to stomp you into dust and then I will use your remains as a filter in the Ninth’s toilets.” 

Gideon looked up at the ceiling, one eye squeezed shut as she pretended to consider Harrow’s threats. Beside her, Harrow waited, an audible shake in each exhale. “Yeah, I can live with that.”

Her words broke the barrier that had been built between them years ago, turned it to dust and rubble, and Harrow surged forward past it, her hands on Gideon’s face, her lips finding Gideon’s mouth in a crushing kiss that exploded in Gideon’s chest and rearranged the facts of her life in such a way that Gideon knew, once and for all, that this -- _this_ \-- was the point of it all. This was the moment she’d always been stumbling toward. Harrow’s lips felt like the home that Gideon never had, the recognition and the glory she’d always craved. Gideon was the hero of every comic she’d ever read and Harrow’s mouth proved it. The delicious press of her lips destroyed Gideon, rebuilt her.

Harrow fell away from the kiss to suck in gulps of air, chest heaving with it, gasping. She dipped her head for a moment and Gideon kissed her presented forehead, tilted her face back up and carefully kissed the purpled skin of Harrow’s closed eyelids. She kissed Harrow’s cheeks and tasted the salt of Harrow’s tears on her lips.

Harrow turned her face and caught Gideon’s mouth again with her own, kissing her lips and then moving on to press kisses to Gideon’s temples and her cheeks, the bridge of her nose and the tip. She kissed Gideon again and again as though she feared that if she left any small space untouched by her lips she would lose Gideon again and this time she would not be able to bring her back. Gideon’s entire body felt alight, buzzing, completely and entirely alive, and when Harrow caught her mouth once more, Gideon pressed her tongue to Harrow’s lip and Harrow opened for her, better and more beautiful than any fantasy Gideon ever conjured in her magazine stacked cell on the Ninth. 

Harrow pushed her hands up underneath Gideon’s shirt, careful to stay well away from the bandages as her fingers scrabbled, hungry as she explored Gideon waist and her lower back. Gideon gasped at the feel of Harrow’s hands on her bare skin, couldn’t believe that this was the same Harrow she’d known her entire life, the same Harrow that might have turned to stone at the mere suggestion of this kind of intimacy not so long ago. 

Gideon felt starving, ravenous, and she bit at Harrow’s lips, at her jaw, and she swallowed the moan that Harrow rewarded her in return. Gideon’s world opened wide, a world of delicious possibility, and it was all focused on Harrow, _Harrow_, and for the first time in her life, Gideon wouldn’t wish it any other way.

It was hard to say what might have happened if Canaan House had stayed silent for a while longer. It was hard to say how far they might have gone if they’ve been given the time.

Instead the screaming started. 

“What -- “ Gideon started, her mouth on the exposed skin at the collar of Harrow’s shirt. They broke apart, stared at each other for a brief terrified moment.

Harrow was frozen, still as a stunned deer. “It’s the Third.”

The screams came again, and they sprang into action. Gideon grabbed her sword and Harrow threw on her robe, her pockets no doubt already stuffed with bone. 

“You should stay here,” Harrow said, when she saw that Gideon was ready, sword in hand. “You’re hurt.”

“Like hell I’m staying here.” 

Harrow’s eyes were bright, her lips swollen, and Gideon couldn’t help herself. She wrapped an arm around Harrow, pulled her in for one last searing kiss. 

“All right,” Harrow said. “Let’s go.”


	9. Coronabeth

Coronabeth Tridentarius was surprised to feel a burst of celebration in her chest at the sudden appearance of the Ninth House. 

They were -- of course -- very late, bursting onto the scene only after Camilla and Corona managed to regain the upper hand. They missed Corona break past the barrier of battling bone at the edge of the pool, dive with near perfect form into water writhing with even more skeletons. They missed Camilla’s impressive use of leverage, kicking boney fingers away from her legs and then working the grip of Judith’s hands on her neck and shoulders to her advantage, anchoring herself as she swung the lower half of her body up with enough force to kick Judith squarely in the face. The kick knocked the Second back and awarded Camilla the seconds she needed to surge back above water, pushing away skeletons and gasping for breath. 

They missed Corona’s heroic swim between stomping fibulas and tibias as she recovered Camilla’s lost rapier from the bottom of the pool, years of childhood swimming lessons finally paying off. They missed the moment that Corona and Camilla were reunited, the way that Camilla took her sword and then Corona, pulled her in, close and tight, holding her with one arm as she tore down a line of skeletons with the other. They missed the way Corona kissed Camilla, there in the middle of a fight for their lives, a kiss that rivaled any that Corona had ever imagined, any kiss in any book she’d ever read or play she’d ever seen back on the Third.

Surely, none of it was as elegant or heroic or romantic as Coronabeth recalled now. There was a lot more panic, a lot more screaming. None of that mattered. The Ninth was not there to witness it. By the time they arrived, Camilla and Corona stood back to back in the swimming pool, their swords swinging, skeletons falling to pieces at their feet. The rest was history ripe for embellishment, for morsels of delectable enhancement.

The Ninth broke in with a miraculously resurrected cavalier and an army of perfectly rendered constructs. They swarmed the First’s skeletons, grinding them to dust as rivulets of blood streamed from the Reverend Daughter’s nose and ears. Gideon the Ninth wielded an absolutely massive sword and swung it with strength and precision that should not have been possible for a woman recently impaled by a fence post. Corona shivered at the sight, her body still shooting sparks from her time in the training room with the Sixth, from their kiss in the pool. She still burned so hot, despite the cold water, despite the interruptions, despite the fight for their lives.

Behind her Judith bellowed again, that same old line about clearance, but she was all talk and very little action now. Corona twisted to get a good look at her from over Camilla’s shoulder. Judith lingered at the edge of the pool, did not attack Camilla or Corona with the ferocity she’d had mere moments before. Corona pushed back at a pair of skeletons and watched her old friend. Judith’s arms were propped against the edge of the pool, her grip tight, as though necessary to hold herself up. Her eyes were unfocused, staring somewhere in the middle distance

“Sixth,” Corona said over the cacophony of bone. “Over there.” She nodded toward Judith and Camilla instantly understood, began to shove skeletons from their path. The bone servants fell away easily, no longer a massive force to be reckoned with. They’d degenerated into something rather amateur, a fledgling necromancer’s party trick. Corona and Camilla advanced on Judith with rapiers raised, but Judith did not respond, barely seemed to notice them.

“Judith?” Corona asked. She lightly poked Judith’s shoulder with the tip of her rapier. Nothing. “What’s happened?”

It was like whatever juice was powering her -- thalergy, thanergy, or some combination thereof -- had been drained. A body left empty was an invitation. Perhaps whatever beast from the River had taken up residence within her had been pulled back to the other side. 

“We should get her out of the pool,” Corona suggested. She saw Camilla nod out of the corner of her eye.

Corona vaulted herself up and out of the water. She grabbed one of Judith’s arms and began to pull. When Judith did not fight her, Camilla pushed aside a few of the remaining skeletons and then wrapped an arm around Judith’s waist, lifting her until she was sitting on edge. Still Judith did not fight. 

Gideon the Ninth appeared beside Corona then, entirely alive and intact. She took Judith’s other arm, and together they hauled her body up until she was standing. No sooner was she on her feet than she began to slump, her body losing all firmness as she sunk toward the floor -- and with Judith went the Canaan House skeletons, bones crumbling into piles that slid across the tiles, that splashed down into the pool and littered the bottom in heaps and drifts.

“Whoa,” the Ninth said. She adjusted her grip on the Second. “Right. Okay, great. How about we get this walking corpse into a chair?”

“Let’s,” Corona agreed. As they began dragging the unresponsive Judith across the room, Corona kept her eyes on Gideon the Ninth. She seemed just as she always had, tall and robust, with a mouth that smiled easily, with hair and eyes too bright for a House like the Ninth. 

“You’re looking remarkably well,” Corona said, when Gideon caught her looking.

Gideon flushed, and Corona thrilled as she always did to see the effect she could have on people.

“Yeah.” 

Gideon kicked aside a pile of lifeless bone, didn’t elaborate. It followed that Nonagesimus had been right. Gideon was in there all along, holding on impossibly tight for her life even after willingly offering it up. Eight Necromancers, eight cavaliers, and Coronabeth Tridentarius. They all arrived at Canaan House in the hopes of ascending to Lyctor. How was it possible that only Corona and Ianthe had the courage and conviction to see it through? How could the Ninth, with a willing cavalier, fail where Ianthe had succeeded? 

Was that it? Did the theorem _require_ an unsuspecting cavalier consumed by force? The will of the necromancer overpowering that of her cavalier? It didn’t make sense. It didn’t fit. Harrowhark Nonagesimus and Gideon the Ninth should have been stronger together. Ianthe and Corona merged would have been stronger still. 

Corona felt herself in danger of crumbling back into that corner of the Lyctor study, heart shattered, world crumbling. She was one lonely half of an incomplete whole. She lived her entire life in a pointless competition, rivals on both sides. She had proven herself in every way allowed to her. 

And still, Ianthe had chosen to gorge herself on lesser meats. 

She discarded her leftovers, scraped the rest into the trash. 

It wasn’t so bad though, was it? Leftovers, yes, but this past week Corona stalked the halls of Canaan House beside Camilla Hect and she felt alive, triumphant. Untethered. 

Ianthe had made a fatal error in judgement. 

If she could just see Corona now, alive and strong. Corona held her own against the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House, alongside Gideon the Ninth, alongside Camilla Hect (of the Snooze House, Ianthe would have sneered) and with the animated corpse of their old friend Judith. One big trapped and happy family. 

Corona laughed and Gideon looked startled.

“Sorry,” Corona said, but she had a hard time controlling her giggles. Gideon was either too stunned or too polite to say anything. 

Eventually they made it through the littered bone debris to a row of chairs set against the wall adjoining the training room. They dumped Judith unceremoniously into the nearest seat. Her body fell forward, bent in half at the waist. The Ninth hauled her up and pushed until she rested upright in the chair.

Corona stood back, surveyed Judith’s seemingly lifeless form, her head still bent so that her chin rested on the blood-stained collar of her shirt. She was so clearly dead, so clearly gone now. But then, Corona would have said the same about Gideon had she been the one to encounter her on the terrace with a metal spike through her chest. 

She scraped her lower lip with her teeth and tasted salt. “Judith?” 

Despite the seemingly obvious emptiness of the body, she braced herself for movement, prepared herself to be scared by a sudden resurgence of violent life, for rotting hands reaching for her throat. Nothing happened. And actually, Judith’s hands looked perfectly preserved. Despite her blood stained clothing, Judith did not appear to be rotting at all.

Camilla materialized at Corona’s side. Water dripped from her hair and clothes. Corona looked at her and felt a wave of prickling relief, felt overwhelmed by the urge to bite Camilla just to make sure she was real. How had they let this happen? She’d been so sure that Camilla was done for, that there was no way she’d be able to break free, that Corona would never make it to her in time. 

The water that dripped from their bodies formed a puddle at their feet. Camilla’s face was hard and ready, the mask of a trained cavalier. Corona saw Camilla Hect now and could not understand how she’d ever dismissed her as unfashionably Sixth, weak and dull. She’d believed exactly what the Sixth had wanted her to believe. Camilla was as skilled as Corona was when it came to playing her assigned role.

Gideon swung back around, so abruptly that Corona started, her feet slipping on the tiles. Camilla steadied her and Corona held on, pulled Camilla close and held her tight for one deliciously brief moment before letting her go. Gideon ignored them, searched the room for her necromancer. Finding her kicking at bones at the other side of the pool, Gideon sagged a little with relief and then turned back toward Corona and Camilla.

“Hey,” she said, presumably to Camilla.

“You should be dead,” Camilla said in return, but her face softened as she said it. 

“Yeah, that was the plan,” Gideon agreed. She shrugged. “I guess I owe you for making sure that didn’t happen?”

“I don’t think I had much to do with it,” Camilla said. Gideon’s brow furrowed at that. 

“You did do very nice work with the stitches,” Corona offered. She made sure to keep her voice kind, light and regal. “Are we going to address what’s happened to Judith? She very nearly killed you.”

“That isn’t the Second,” Camilla said. She reached up and pressed a careful hand to her neck. Corona could see her throat working as she swallowed once and then again. 

“It isn’t?” Gideon asked.

“Of course not,” Nonagesimus’s voice cut through the room, that peculiar combination of nasal and haughty. “You haven’t figured it out yet, Nav?”

Corona wanted to slap her. Instead she lifted a hand toward Harrowhark and said, “Why don’t you enlighten us, Reverend Daughter.”

Harrowhark’s sharp eyes settled on Corona. Neither of them had forgotten their last encounter in the Ninth’s chambers. “It’s Teacher.”

“Of course,” Corona conceded. She sat in one of the empty chairs. “Of course, that makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Gideon said.

“No,” Corona continued. “It does. The skeletons were connected to those little priests, weren’t they? So if the skeleton servants are back, then it follows that so must a priest be back.” The same priests that made such a stink about the fact that the Third had sent _two_ necromancers, the lengthy bickering about ‘clearance’ while their shuttle sat above the First’s atmosphere. She’s been so distracted by Ianthe’s betrayal, stuck on the Ninth’s nonsensical choices, consumed at the thought of connection, of sweet release with the Sixth. She wasn’t thinking clearly. 

Harrowhark approached Judith -- _Teacher_ \-- flanked by four of her skeletons. Had she been painted and covered in the Ninth’s black shrouds, it might have been an imposing sight. With a bare and blood-streaked face, without her cloak, she looked like a child with a nosebleed, barely older than Jeannemary Chatur. Harrowhark pushed the Second’s head back gingerly using only her fingertips, the careful touch of someone who always wore gloves and wasn’t comfortable getting her hands dirty. 

The Ninth only dealt in dry dead things. 

Judith’s head fell back against the wood without resistance. 

“Where is Teacher now?” Camilla asked.

“I’m not sure,” Harrowhark admitted. “Perhaps there is a transitional period associated with this process. The records that remain in the Sixth Lyctor laboratory may provide some insight if they weren’t tampered with prior to the start of all this.”

“What do we do with the body until then?” Gideon the Ninth asked.

Corona watched the way Camilla rubbed at her throat and heat swirled low in her belly. She thought of Ianthe and bile churned in her gut. She sat up straight in her chair, cleared her throat, and said, “I propose we throw the body off the nearest terrace and be done with it.”

“Seconded,” Gideon said, immediately. 

Camilla shook her head. “We’ll need him.”

“He just tried to kill you,” Corona countered. “He killed Judith and Marta.” He’d interrupted the only good thing to come out of this entire mess.

“Is that how we’re judging things now?” Harrow asked. “If Teacher deserves death for his crimes, then what about the crimes of the Third?”

“Oh, get off, Nonagesimus,” Corona snapped. Of course, the Ninth would condemn Coronabeth for the crimes of her sister. And what of the Ninth’s crimes? Blasphemy, treason, _blackmail_. It was hard to understand why the King Undying didn’t squash the Ninth at its inception, be done with these traitorous bone nuns once and for all. 

Corona’s fingers itched to draw her rapier. She would duel the Ninth’s cavalier and revel in the jealous flush that would rise on Harrowhark’s cheeks. She would conquer the Ninth just as she had done the Sixth, the only real power ever afforded her. 

“Corona,” Camilla said, a hoarse plea of a whisper, and Corona felt the fight drain from her limbs. She had not set out to conquer the Sixth. Her heart had warmed to Camilla without intention, without motive. She had not meant for it to happen, but now that it had, she would not so carelessly throw it away 

“The Sixth is right,” the Ninth continued. “As it stands, Teacher is our only hope of getting off the First.”

Corona kept her eyes on Camilla, on the wet grey fabric that clung to Camilla’s muscled arms, on the crease of tension in her forehead. 

“Perhaps that’s true,” Corona said. “But maybe it’s done already. Teacher informed us on our first night here that he is one with God. He’s the Emperor’s eyes. If that is Teacher hiding out in Judith’s body, and if we no longer have clearance to be on the First, then don’t you think that lends itself to the truth that we’ve already been found? His Lyctors are already on their way back.”

Even as she made her argument, she could not reconcile it in her heart. Ianthe left her behind with no intention of ever coming back. 

“I don’t think so,” Camilla said. Her voice pulled Corona back to the present.

“Why not?” 

“There was an electric transmitter box in Teacher’s room.”

“That’s right,” Gideon said with a snap of her fingers. “If Teacher’s got a mind link to the Emperor, why would he need a transmitter?”

“It transmitted directly to the Imperial Flagship,” Camilla said, at the same time that Harrowhark said, “We should check the room.”

“I’ve checked,” Camilla said. “It was the second place I went after we all split up that first night. The transmitter is gone.” 

“Gone?” Harrow said with a pause.

Camilla nodded. “This is pure conjecture, but I’d guess it was removed as part of the clean up effort.”

“Why would they -- “ Harrowhark’s eyes caught on Corona. “You still haven’t told us where you were when the Lyctors arrived.”

Corona shook her head, unprepared for the question. “What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said,” Harrow countered. “We left you in the Lyctor study with the body of your cavalier. We didn’t see you again until Camilla found you in the entry room outside the facility hatch. Why weren’t you found? And if you were found, why are you still here?”

Corona narrowed her eyes. “I never saw this transmitter. I certainly didn’t take it.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Panic fluttered in Corona’s chest. She wouldn’t stand for this, for these constant accusations of wrongdoing. She stood and pushed past Harrow intent on storming out, but she was stopped by Camilla with a hand on her arm. 

“Corona,” Camilla said, and her voice was embarrassingly gentle, perfectly concerned. “Stay with us.”

Corona’s nasal passages felt clogged and she sniffed, tilted her head toward the ceiling to stave back the tears she could feel rising toward her eyes. She hoped she looked like a stuck up bitch, superior, above this. She hoped she looked anything but the soggy and broken discarded trash she was. “I won’t subject myself to the accusations of the Ninth.”

“Would you tell me?” Camilla asked, her voice low, and Corona laughed before she realized that Camilla was serious. “Would you?”

Corona swallowed. She searched Camilla’s face and found no ulterior motive. She searched Camilla’s face and felt seen. She felt a tear slip down her cheek, and felt no shame at losing that battle. Camilla wiped it away with her thumb.

“Oh,” Gideon said, just catching up. Harrowhark rolled her eyes. Camilla ignored them both, had eyes only for Corona. Corona’s heart swelled.

“Would you?” Camilla asked, one more time.

“Yes,” Corona said. Her voice sounded wet, broken. She swallowed and tried again. “But only you.”

“Only me,” Camilla promised. She squeezed Corona’s hand and then turned to Nonagesimus. “I vouch for Corona. I trust her.”

“Why?” Harrow asked, incredulous, her question erupting from her mouth like barely suppressed vomit. “Come now, Sixth. You can’t be serious.”

“I vouch for Coronabeth Tridentarius,” Camilla repeated.

Harrow’s mouth moved silently, testing out an apparently very long list of horrid little retorts. She didn’t voice them, instead turned and walked away from the group. She stalked toward the other end of the room, leaving Corona, Camilla and Gideon standing around Judith’s corpse. She stopped at the edge of the pool, looked like she might plunge right in.

“Right,” Gideon said. She cleared her throat. “I’ll stay with these two. Go do whatever you need to do.”

**

Corona led them up two flights of stairs before Camilla paused, leaned back against a wall, and closed her eyes.

For a moment, Corona thought she must be winded, that the adrenaline of the fight had worn off. She pressed a hand to Camilla’s arm, concerned.

Camilla’s hand went to her throat. She pressed against it with the tips of her fingers, shook her head, and then she started to laugh. She laughed long and hard, her body shaking with it hard enough that she had to bend over with her hands propped on her knees. Corona laughed in surprise at Camilla’s outburst, a great loud bark that used to drive Ianthe mad. 

“I have never been so unprepared,” Camilla said to the floor. “I have never let myself get so caught up that I -- they nearly bested us. We were caught with our pants down, with our asses out, with --”

“Oh, come now, they didn’t give us a chance to get that far,” Corona said, unsure how else to respond. Should she apologize? Was this Camilla regretting the comfort she’d found in Corona’s arms? Was this the end of it, so soon after Camilla stood by her against the Ninth?

Camilla stood and pulled the wet fabric of her shirt away from her torso, then let it drop again. When Camilla looked up, it was with an intensity that pushed all of Corona’s fears aside. Camilla was not done with her, far from it. 

“You were something else back there,” Camilla said. “You would have made a fantastic cavalier.”

Something popped in Corona's chest, a messy burst of emotion. She fumbled toward Camilla and was met with an urgent kiss, with tight hands gripping Corona’s shoulders. 

“I was terrified,” Corona admitted, her forehead pressed to Camilla’s, her lips so close that they brushed as she spoke. 

She took Camilla’s hand, pulled her back toward the stairs.

“Where are we going?” Camilla asked.

“The roof. I’ll tell you everything there.”

**

She could hear the whistle of wind as she rounded the corner and found the heavy door propped open, just as she’d left it. She led Camilla through the door and onto the roof.

Camilla squinted in the bright light of Dominicus, falling fast. She looked around, at the steep sloping turrets, at the flat expanse of cracked grey stones, shining metal sloping to a narrow ledge. She took a few steps toward the edge and looked down. They were at the center of Canaan House, only the briefest glimpses of water from here.

Corona wrapped her arms around herself, stayed close to the door. The wind chilled her skin through her wet clothes, whipped her hair into her face. She closed her eyes and confessed.

“Ianthe returned for me after everyone left. I don’t know how long she was gone, but eventually -- She appeared from nowhere. She started to rain until she was there again at my side. She dragged me away from Babs’s body, pulled me by the arm and the hair until we arrived here.”

“She brought you here to keep you safe?” Camilla asked.

“God Undying, no,” Corona laughed. “She brought me here to show off! She brought me here for a great laugh at my expense.” It was just as it always had been. Ianthe had a permanent captive audience in Coronabeth, in her poor talentless fraud of a sister. She always had. Ianthe studied necromantic texts. Corona studied Ianthe. Learn to mimic your sister. Learn to make them believe. A matched set. 

Those days were over. Ianthe had intended to show Corona exactly how things would be from then on.

Corona lifted her shirt, showed Camilla the scabbed over line on her side where Ianthe had sliced her. 

Camilla traced a careful finger over the line. Corona shivered at the touch, at the cold. She pressed Camilla’s hand down against her skin, her warmth radiating against Corona’s side. 

“She cut me just deep enough to draw blood, made it dance before my eyes and then she held me over the edge -- there, do you see? This ledge overlooks the courtyard.” 

“So it does,” Camilla said, though she didn’t step away. She’d already confirmed their vantage point, knew exactly the area of courtyard that this ledge overlooked.

“She held me over the edge, smiled as I begged, and then she let me fall.” Corona had screamed and screamed, sure that this was the end, that she’d splatter against the stone of the courtyard, be impaled on the fountain. She fell only a few feet. “Ianthe had fashioned a net from my blood. She let me think I was safe for just a moment, and then the net dissolved, only to be replaced by another a few feet below. If not for the explosion, for the battle below, I truly believe she would have killed me once she grew bored. She would have sucked me dry and tossed me aside.”

“But she didn’t kill you,” Camilla guessed. “She was distracted by the fight spilling out into the courtyard.”

“A party no one thought to invite her to,” Corona agreed. “She left me lying here. I watched Dulcinea Septimus tear off my sister’s arm. I watched Harrowhark bring Septimus down. I watched you drag Gideon the Ninth’s body back into the house. I hid there --” She pointed to an alcove close to the roof’s edge. “I could still see the courtyard, but I was shielded from view. It didn’t matter. No one came up to the roof to check for me. Why would they?

“I watched them load the bodies into the shuttle. Marta, Naberius, Magnus Quinn and Abigail Pent. I saw them lift Ianthe. She looked up at me as they carried her inside. I swear I saw her smile. I think I saw her wave.”

“Corona,” Camilla started, and then shook her head unsure what to say.

Corona shrugged, released Camilla’s hand and took a step away from the wall. “I would have done the same to her had the tables been turned.”

“I don’t believe that.”

Corona moved closer to the edge. “Then you can tell Nonagesimus what she needs to know with good conscience, confirmation that I’m not in league with the Emperor’s Lyctors despite my familial ties.”

She took another step. She wanted to see the courtyard, the smashed fountain and the broken railings. She wanted to see the spot where Ianthe lay, drained and unmoving while they searched for her arm. She watched them search, knew they weren’t ever going to find it. Corona saw Dulcinea throw it back, saw it disappear over the edge of the terrace. Could a Lyctor grow back a limb?

“We should get back to the Ninth,” Camilla said behind her. 

Corona took one more step. Her legs felt liquid. Her whole body shook. 

“Corona,” Camilla warned. 

Corona ignored her. She shut her eyes and remembered how it felt to fall, the look of twisted satisfaction on her sister’s face. Babs’s eyes, shining and greasy inside Ianthe’s sockets, gleeful at Corona’s fate even as he fought against his own consumption. 

Camilla shouted just as Corona’s foot slipped on the polished strip of metal. She stumbled and then Camilla had her, strong arms at her waist, pulling her back. 

“We should get back to the Ninth,” Corona murmured in agreement. Camilla didn’t move. She stood there, and she held Corona tight and close, and when Corona felt Camilla’s mouth on her shoulder, felt the exquisitely gentle press of teeth, she was lost to reason and hoped never to be found again. She leaned back against Camilla, guided Camilla’s hand from her waist to her breasts, and when Camilla began to caress her through the damp fabric of her shirt, she shuddered, and pressed Camilla’s hand down harder still. Camilla followed her lead. Her fingers found the hard bud of Corona’s nipple and she pinched, the maddening bite of flesh between fingers. 

“Yes,” Corona urged. Her voice was blown already, raw, honest. Camilla’s mouth sucked at the skin of Corona’s neck, making promises that Corona desperately needed Camilla to keep. Her knees buckled and Camilla tightened her grip. 

Corona was bubbling, boiling, felt like she might crack open, might burst forth from her skin. Her whole body was pulsating, desperate to feel something _good_. More than anything she needed to feel wanted, and oh, how she _wanted_.

“I want you,” she rasped. “Tell me. Do you, Camilla? Do you want me?”

Camilla’s hands paused, but Corona didn’t panic. She’d grown up watching and she understood cavaliers. Corona understood the confusion of a cavalier who wasn’t used to wanting anything beyond the needs and wants of her necromancer. One flesh, one end. It really could be such a beautiful thing when it worked out as intended. The ultimate union, consummation, climax. 

“It’s okay,” Corona promised. It was okay to mourn and want at the same time. It was okay to find comfort in each other now and not regret it later. 

Camilla’s mouth found her ear, teeth to her earlobe. Her breath came heavy, ragged.

“I want you,” Camilla whispered. The hand still holding Corona’s waist began to move, sliding down over Corona’s wet clothes. Camilla unbuttoned Corona’s trousers with expert precision and when her hand slipped in and found Corona slick with her wanting. Camilla groaned in Corona’s ear, long and low. When she spoke again, it was no longer a whisper: “Emperor Undying, how I want you.”

Camilla’s grip was firm against Corona’s breasts. Corona worked herself on Camilla’s hand, rocking on Camilla’s fingers, trusting Camilla to keep her safe. She shut her eyes and she saw Ianthe before her, a smirk twisting her lips and Naberius Tern’s eyes bright and knowing. 

_My slutty sister slumming it with the Sixth._

Ianthe loved alliteration. Ianthe really had the most terrible taste.

“She made the biggest mistake of her life when she chose him over me,” Corona said, barely managed to get the words out before her legs began to shake again, before her heart began to thrum, pleasure flashing though her, lightning that struck in the same place again and again. She couldn’t stand, couldn’t withstand this, wouldn’t give in.

“Yes,” Camilla breathed. Her hand left Camilla’s breasts, wrapped around her torso and held her tight, fingers twisting in the fabric of Corona's shirt. Oh, she was so close. Oh, Gorgeous Camilla, oh, splendid.

“We would have been such a force to be reckoned with.”

“You don’t need her,” Camilla promised, spoke the words against Corona’s neck, nibbled them into the line of Corona’s jaw. “You’re a force on your own.” 

Camilla’s fingers slid inside her and for the first time Corona believed it was true. Corona shut her eyes and let her head fall back against Camilla’s shoulder. Oh, she believed it. In that moment, she knew the truth, saw it so clearly. She wasn’t the weak sister. She wasn’t useless. She was a fucking force to be reckoned with. 

Coronabeth Tridentarius would rise like a phoenix. She would soar. 

She bore down on Camilla’s fingers, cried out as they pressed just right, as her world exploded into searing white fire, as she sprouted wings and took flight. 

Camilla eased Corona down onto the flat expanse of the roof, until Corona lay on her back, her body trembling, forever changed. She stared up at the darkening sky, at the clouds smudged purple and the streaks of orange and red splashed across that neverending blue. 

Camilla’s face appeared above hers. Her fingers wiped the tears from the corners of Corona’s eyes. She cradled Corona’s face in her hands. Her gestures were gentle, but her eyes were dark, her pupils blown, her body strumming. Corona pulled her down into a kiss, wrapped her legs around Camilla’s waist, spoke her own pledge against Camilla’s skin.

“The things I’m going to do to you,” Corona promised Camilla. She caught Camilla’s lip in her teeth, savored Camilla’s gasp. “I’m going to eat you alive.”


	10. Harrow

The Ninth’s quarters were dark, the curtains drawn to block out the night. Harrow lay on her back and listened to the steady breathing of her cavalier. She willed herself to keep still, focused on trying to make out the pale yellow-white hint of the knucklebones hanging above them. In the bed beside her, Gideon Nav shifted her long limbs. Her arm brushed Harrow’s and Harrow’s skin prickled and her heart jumped into her throat. She lost all focus. Gideon was beside her and Gideon was awake. This wasn’t one of those many similar nights, Harrow lying awake beside the prone form of her cavalier. It wasn’t that easy to forget that everything had changed, everything was new. 

Gideon was alive and well, awake at Harrow’s side. It was impossible for Harrow to forget how she’d succumbed to the desperate pull in her gut, to the overwhelming incomprehensible need for this other person, the only other living soul in the world that had ever truly mattered. Harrow surrendered to it, cracked open her chest and presented Gideon Nav with her throbbing longing heart. She stood on the edge of a cliff and let herself fall into this, kissed Gideon with everything she had kept locked up inside since Gideon’s own fall just weeks before. And Gideon -- infuriating ridiculous perfect Gideon -- Gideon met Harrow’s desperation, her need, and she returned it in kind. Gideon kissed her back with such ferocious intensity that there was no mistaking their intentions, no mistaking the fact that they’d finally found each other, souls meeting after a lifetime of fumbling, clawing, and fighting toward this moment. This revelation. One flesh. One exquisite end.

Why then, did they sit in near silence during their shift watching for Teacher’s inevitable return? Why did Harrow pace the room, pulling up constructs and letting them fall. Why did Gideon slump into an empty chair, her boots in Teacher’s lap, her sword propped at her side, her eyes closed. Harrow spent three hours pretending a swimming pool did not exist, that everything was normal with her cavalier, that she hadn’t had her _tongue_ in her cavalier’s mouth, until finally _finally_ the Sixth returned with the Third. By then, neither Harrow nor Gideon seemed able to look anywhere except at the floor. After some negotiation, the four of them dragged the Second’s body to the atrium that housed the Facility hatch. This had the benefit of 1) being far from the thousands of bones in and around the pool and 2) being very close to the hatch should they be required to retreat or forced to push Teacher down (an absolute last resort). From there it was determined that Camilla would take the first shift alongside Coronabeth Tridentarius. This was, primarily, due to concerns about Gideon’s wellbeing, though Camilla had bruises blooming visibly along her collarbone by that point. Camilla did not seem the sort to push herself past her limits unless absolutely necessary, so Harrow chose to believe her when she said that she was fine.

Only then did Harrow and Gideon return to these rooms with awkward shuffling steps. Once here, they stood on either side of this bed and stared at each other until Harrow wasn’t sure she could bear it any longer, thought her heart might stop entirely. She nearly ordered Gideon to sleep in one of the beds in the main room.

“About before,” Harrow started, dreading every word of this sure-to-be excruciating discussion of feelings. It was one thing when they were all charged up, when Gideon was suddenly awake and Harrow’s heart felt like it was going to burst with need, with the _relief_ of it. Now it was -- 

“Listen, if you want me to, I’ll sleep on one of those beds in the other room,” Gideon offered, her voice strange, restrained, as though she’d read Harrow’s mind and put voice to Harrow’s discarded thoughts

“Please don’t,” Harrow said, the words coming out at an embarrassing speed. 

She sagged in relief when Gideon didn’t press, when Gideon simply slipped into the bed, long and lean, whole and gorgeous. When Harrow still didn’t move, Gideon turned toward her, raised an eyebrow. Her mouth twitched, the threat of a smile that would overwhelm Harrow in an instant. Harrow reached over and shut off the light, plunged them into darkness, took a deep breath to regain her composure. 

And now here they lay, in the dark, on their backs, trying to make out the shape of hanging knucklebones, trying so hard not to set the bed on fire with a single touch.

“Are you sure I’m not dead?” Gideon asked suddenly, her voice piercing the quiet so abruptly that Harrow jumped. “It seems like I might be dead, but then is this heaven or hell?”

“Hell?” Harrow asked. She felt panic rise in her chest, a crazed doubt that they weren’t together in this, even after everything that had happened that day, everything that had happened on that terrace and in that pool. “You’re asking me if this is _hell_?”

“So not hell then,” Gideon amended immediately. “Lesson learned -- Nearly dying doesn’t stop you from shoving an entire foot in your big mouth.”

Harrow winced up at the ceiling. “Should I sleep in the other room?” 

“No,” Gideon said. “Though that would confirm the answer to my question once and for all.”

Harrow felt a terrifying need to drape herself over Gideon, to press her ear to Gideon’s chest, listen to her heart, make sure that she was real. She wanted to hold Gideon so tight that their flesh fused, that they melted into one another, one flesh until the end. She wanted to get back to that perfect moment, just before the Third’s screams. That moment when everything clicked into place, when they crashed together like the waves breaking against the side of Canaan House, when everything made perfect sense and none of the details mattered anymore. She wanted to press her hands to Gideon’s skin, feel her fingers warmed by Gideon’s fire. Instead she felt Gideon’s breath puff against her cheek, the only indication that Gideon had turned her head toward Harrow. 

“I overstepped,” Harrow admitted. She kept her face turned up toward the ceiling, her back stiff and straight. “I’m sorry. I’ve been waiting and thinking for weeks and I didn’t stop to think that for you it hasn’t been -- rather it hasn’t _felt_ like it’s been --”

“You’ve been thinking about kissing me for weeks?” Gideon cut in. 

Harrow squeezed her eyes shut. “You’re absolutely right,” she concluded. “This is hell.”

“Is this how we slept while I was out of it?” Gideon asked, pushing forward as though Harrow had not spoken at all.

Harrow’s face was burning, her entire body aflame. “No.”

Gideon shifted beside her. “Like this?” 

“No,” Harrow said. She took a deep breath and then turned to Gideon, curled up against Gideon’s side, her head pressed carefully to Gideon’s chest. “Like this.”

Gideon didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to, her heart did the talking for her. They were lucky the Sixth was not there. Camilla’s inner nurse would not like Gideon’s heart rate at that moment. The data would not look well in Camilla’s book. Harrow felt like she might shatter into a thousand pieces, might slide out of the bed and right onto the floor.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Harrow admitted. 

“Do you want to do this?” Gideon asked. She shifted her arm away from the side of her body, so that Harrow fit neatly into the space. Gideon wrapped her hand around Harrow’s shoulder, held her close, held her tight.

“I need to,” Harrow said. “I need you.”

Gideon tilted her head, pressed her face into Harrow’s hair. “You’ve got me.”

Harrow turned her cheek in toward Gideon’s chest, toward the soft swell of Gideon’s breast. 

“I could pick a fight to get us going,” Gideon offered. “Really get us riled up.”

That wasn’t what Harrow was yearning for. She didn’t need a repeat of their lusty adrenaline-filled collison. What Harrow needed, what she wanted, was the freedom to _worship_. She wanted to take it slow, take Gideon in, each and every bit of her. She didn’t know how to do that without Gideon being _Gideon_, making jokes, getting her flustered, just generally mucking the whole thing up. She wanted to press her lips to every inch of Gideon’s skin, methodically, ritually, like the clicking of bones. She wanted to lay Gideon Nav on the dais in Drearburh and anoint her with lips and teeth, trace spirals and lines of luminescent dust over her bronze skin. 

She burned with it, with the embarrassment and the need. It was too much, too intimate. Gideon was too Gideon and Harrow was far too Harrow. Anyway, there was no bioluminescent dust on the First. Only Harrow... and her lips... and her teeth…

Harrow sat up, pushed to the edge of the bed and turned on the light. It buzzed to life, illuminating the room with blue-white light. Gideon’s hand went to her eyes and she groaned at the sudden intrusion.

You see? Harrow had already botched this up. It wouldn’t be what she imagined -- couldn’t be -- but then, what was the worst that could happen? Gideon would laugh and they’d go back to lying beside each other in awkward silence, Gideon snickering and Harrow fuming. Harrow had already brought the awkward silence. She was so consumed by this that she couldn’t think of anything else. The words dried up on her tongue.

“Are you… going to sit there and watch me sleep?” Gideon asked, squinting up at her. 

“No,” Harrow said, then: “Yes, eventually. First I want to take off your shirt.” Stupid. Awkward. She couldn’t believe she’d said it like that.

Gideon, thankfully, didn’t ask Harrow to repeat herself. Her shirt was up and over her head in seconds, discarded on the floor. She reached for Harrow and Harrow shook her head, pushed her back. “Lie down.”

“The stitches are fine,” Gideon protested. Her hand pressed to the white bandage and she shrugged. “Look, it feels fine.”

“Good,” Harrow said. “If I ask something of you, will you give me your word?”

Gideon’s face fell a little at that and Harrow suddenly remembered the last time that Harrow asked for Gideon’s word, her promise that if Harrow didn’t make it, Gideon would go back to the Ninth and guard the Tomb. Harrow had other plans for the Tomb now, but that would have to wait.

“Not that. I just want you to lie still while I -- “ she closed her eyes. “Would you lie still while I kiss you?”

She kept her eyes squeezed shut while she waited for Gideon’s answer. Gideon, blessed Gideon, did not make her wait long.

“Yeah,” Gideon said. “Okay.”

Harrow opened her eyes. Gideon was watching her now with an expression that Harrow could only describe as awestruck. It was intimidating. 

“Harrow,” Gideon said. “Come on, you have my word.” She reached out, took Harrow’s hand in hers, gave Harrow a little tug back toward the center of the bed. 

Harrow let herself be pulled until she was sitting over Gideon with her legs folded beneath her. She twisted her hand in Gideon’s grip so that she was the one doing the holding and then brought that hand to her lips. She kissed each pad of each finger, each fingernail, each knuckle. She kissed the lines on Gideon’s palm, the ridges on the back of her hand and the bones at her wrist. She put her mouth to the inside of Gideon’s wrist, pressed her tongue to the veins, felt Gideon’s heart beating against her and groaned at that suppressed longing finally fulfilled. Gideon was staring at her, but with Harrow’s groan, she swore under her breath and turned her eyes away. 

She kept to her word. She kept to her word as Harrow kissed up her arm, as Harrow pressed her lips to the soft skin inside of Gideon’s elbow. She kept her word as Harrow pressed her mouth to Gideon’s biceps and her teeth to Gideon’s shoulder, as she counted the dark freckles clustered there, pressing kisses over each patch. 

Across one shoulder, the clavicle, the throat. Gideon tried so hard to stay still, moving only to stretch and strain, hands against the sheets or pressed to Harrow’s side, mouth shut, eyes watching, then squeezed shut, then watching again. Harrow worked her way up Gideon’s other arm, and then began to start down her chest, the flat expanse of her sternum, the small swell of each breast, the tip of each nipple.

Gideon made a desperate gasping noise, an absolutely gorgeous noise that made Harrow’s heart stutter and jump. When Harrow took Gideon’s nipple between her lips, suckled it, felt the point of it with her teeth -- then Gideon hitched beneath her, breathed a curse and followed it with Harrow’s name spoken like a promise. She urged Harrow on with the catch in her breath, with the strain of her body trying to move closer without moving at all. 

Gideon Nav gave herself over to Harrow, wholly, entirely. By the time Harrow was done with Gideon’s torso, with Gideon’s neck, with her arms and her legs, Gideon was visibly shaking, her mouth slack. She watched Harrow with glazed eyes, with fingers that held tight to the bedsheets. 

“I underestimated you,” Harrow admitted, her voice low. “I’ve always underestimated you, haven’t I?”

Gideon didn’t respond. She was too far gone for that. Harrow watched the rise and fall of Gideon’s chest, the points of her breasts, the white patch of bandage. She carefully wrapped her hands around Gideon's right calf, pushed Gideon’s leg up until she folded, leg bent at the knee, foot pressed down against the mattress. 

Harrow kissed the inside of Gideon’s knee, and then her eye caught on the line of Gideon’s thigh, on the shadow of hair between her legs, and suddenly Harrow was the one shaking. She pressed her forehead to Gideon’s knee, felt lightheaded, and then she felt something burst in her chest, one of those barriers she’d built within herself, erected so carefully in her fortress at Drearburh. She felt it crumble, and knew exactly what she wanted, exactly what she needed to do next.

She took her time getting there, kissed and sucked at Gideon’s thighs, at that wealth of trembling muscle. She pressed her tongue and her teeth to Gideon’s skin, felt intoxicated by the scent of her, the feel of her. Her mouth watered and she realized she was making small needy noises as she kissed her way down Gideon’s legs. Embarrassing lusty noises, noises that sounded wet with her want and gave everything away. 

It didn’t matter. Gideon sounded just the same. Gideon was right there with her, matching each embarrassing admission with her own sounds, and they were delicious, throaty, so fucking gorgeous to Harrow’s ears.

“Gideon,” Harrow said, pushing her mouth against Gideon’s skin in an attempt to muffle the wonder in her voice, the devotion in the word, the reverence. Gideon.

Another wall fell within her and she took that next step, pressed her mouth to the spot where Gideon’s thigh met her hip, and then she was there, _there_. She kissed the damp hair between Gideon’s legs, marveled at the way Gideon trembled, the sound of her groan. Gideon pressed her forearm over her eyes, the fingers of her other hand still pulling at the sheets. 

“Kill me,” Gideon begged. “Whatever you do next, it’s absolutely going to kill me. Please hurry.”

It was the single most intimate act she’d ever initiated with anyone. It was -- it was Gideon spread out on the dais, her body shining with the iridescent green of the Ninth. 

Gideon Nav; Harrow’s beginning, Harrow’s undoing. 

Harrow’s flesh and Harrow’s end. 

It was Harrow’s hands spread wide on Gideon’s thighs. It was the arch of Gideon’s back, the urging undulations of her hips, the long expanse of her torso. It was the red spot at her wrist where Harrow had pressed her tongue to feel Gideon’s pulse, where she’d sucked too long at Gideon’s skin. It was the vibrant blue of the Sixth’s stitches, the sticky line of residue from the tape. It was the two dark freckles beneath Gideon’s right breast, beautiful perfect marks that Harrow had never noticed before and now would never forget.

It was Gideon’s strong thighs straining against her, threatening -- promising-- to lock Harrow in and never let her go. It was Gideon giving in, Gideon’s hand finding its way into Harrow’s short curls and holding her close. It was Gideon’s taste on her tongue and Gideon’s gasps in the air, kisses like the clicking of knucklebones, one after another, after another, after another. 

Harrow wanted more. She wanted to sink into Gideon, find her home there. She wanted to take up residence and never ever leave. She settled for a finger instead, one finger pressed to Gideon, and Gideon opened for her, welcomed her with bucking hips, desperate and urgent to take Harrow in, to connect in this way that didn’t leave anyone dying on a terrace, this union that they could come back for again and again. It would never be enough, and it was so much more than Harrow had ever let herself imagine. 

A second finger and Gideon’s body rolled against the mattress, swelled and contracted as she worked to meet Harrow in this union. Harrow’s hand, Harrow’s tongue, Harrow’s soul.

Gideon legs were shaking, her feet pushing her hips up from the mattress, closer, closer, _closer_, her voice rhythmic, surprised by each new touch, each new angle. Harrow held on, drunk on the taste of Gideon, the feel of her, the sound. Gideon’s hand on her head held her close and Harrow realized she was moaning, moaning in time with Gideon’s own small sounds, moaning with the slide of Gideon on her tongue, on her fingers.

Gideon came like an earthquake, her cry loud in the room, the shaking of her body rattling the knucklebones. Harrow collapsed against her, her mouth open against Gideon’s thigh, tongue still working against her skin, sucking, suckling, desperate to continue, longing for more, until Gideon found her, big hands hauling Harrow up, turning her onto her back, pulling at her clothes. Gideon’s mouth claimed hers with a fierce kiss, working her mouth open and making promises that Harrow knew Gideon intended to keep.

“I’ve figured it out,” Gideon said, hands hot on Harrow’s skin. “It’s definitely not hell.”

**

It was still dark when Harrow woke to a knock at the door. 

Beside her, Gideon snored, oblivious. She was sprawled out and naked, one leg thrown over Harrow’s thighs. 

Harrow had been counting on the fact that she would wake up before Teacher, before Gideon, that she would have time to complete her mourning rituals, the application of her paint, and the careful twist of knucklebones around her fingers. That she would have time to thank the Tomb, because there was no question in her mind that the Tomb was responsible for depositing a blessing like Gideon Nav on the Ninth. It surely could not be their Lord Undying, their Emperor, who believed that Gideon sprawled out on that terrace with a spike through her chest was the way it should be. The Lord Undying whose acolytes would bow down and revere the eternal burning of one soul to fuel another. The Eighth did not have a leg to stand on, but in their condemnation of Lyctorhood, Harrow knew that they were right.

Gideon was drooling onto Harrow’s pillow. How many nights had Harrow crouched over Gideon in the dark hours before morning? How many times had Harrow watched Gideon sleep, watched her drool, as she rummaged through Gideon’s pockets, as she left notes with instructions for the day ahead. It never seemed endearing until now. It never seemed like a guiding light.

The knock on the door came again. Harrow could tell by the pattern of the knocking that it was not the Sixth. The Sixth knocked on her door every morning, a straightforward even-toned knock. The knocking now was rapid and varied in tone and force. It was the Third, which meant that Teacher must be awake, that Camilla had stayed with him and sent the Third to retrieve the Ninth.

Harrow slipped out of bed, careful not to move Gideon too much. Let her sleep. 

She wrapped a blanket around herself and then crossed the main room of the Ninth’s quarters. She opened the door just a crack to find Coronabeth Tridentarius standing on the other side, her hand raised to knock again.

“Oh, Ninth,” Corona said, her hand moving to press against her chest, her breasts heaving in surprise. Harrow couldn’t help herself, she rolled her eyes. 

“He’s awake?” she asked, getting to the point.

“He is,” Corona said. “Just. Camilla has it under control, but your presence would be --”

“I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes,” Harrow said. She shut the door in the Third’s face. She didn’t rush, certain that, with their position so close to the Facility, and with Teacher tied to a chair, the Sixth surely had things under control. She took the time to step into the sonic, to dress and apply her facepaint. She wrote out a note and tucked it into the curled palm of Gideon’s hand, letting Gideon know where to find food, letting her know where Harrow had gone. She’d paused over the note for a long time, finally signing it with a loving endearment and feeling a flash of heat spread over her face. She tore that first version of the note up and started over, kept to the facts, but made sure to address Gideon by her name -- no Griddle, no Nav -- and signed it ‘your necromancer.’ That felt too formal, but far less embarrassing to commit to a scrap of flimsy. Before leaving the room, she pressed her lips to Gideon’s forehead and smiled at the black smudge of paint she left behind. That was, perhaps, better than any platitude she might have written.

She found the Sixth and the Third exactly as she expected to find them, standing tall in front of the tied, handcuffed, and fully animated, body of Captain Deuteros.

“Ah, the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House,” Teacher said, his intonation strange in the mouth of the Second. 

“He seems more settled,” Camilla reported, stepping aside to let Harrow come forward. “Less combative.”

Judith’s eyes were alight, dancing, as they watched Harrow approach. Judith’s head tilted, and when that mouth spoke again, it remained Teacher’s voice and Teacher’s intonation that was pushed out past those lips. “Welcome, though you should not be here. Welcome to the First.”

“We never left,” Harrow said. She came to stand between Camilla the Sixth and the Princess of Ida. They moved in unison, as cavaliers flanking the nearest necromancer, though the Third was surely no such thing. Let her have this new role to play, this new game of pretend. It was an improvement over the old Corona, the Corona who stood over Harrow and demanded that Harrow finish the horror show that had been started, fill her mouth with the flesh and blood of her cavalier, charge herself up at Gideon’s expense. Never. 

“Yet the invitation has been revoked,” Teacher continued. “Something must be done.”

“Does the Emperor know that we’re here?” Coronabeth asked.

Teacher turned from Harrow, looked to the Third. “Well, now. The Princess of Ida. I didn’t recognize you.”

Corona pulled back as though struck, but she didn’t seem upset, merely surprised. She shifted, stood taller under Teacher’s regard.

Harrow cleared her throat. She took another step forward, careful in her stance and direct in her gaze. When Teacher did not respond after a pause, Harrow repeated the question: “Answer us. Does the Emperor know that we are here?”

“Perhaps He does,” Teacher said, noncommittal. Camilla was right. He looked better situated in the body of Judith Deuteros than he had when Harrow had burst into the room the night before. Was he lying?

Harrow looked to the Sixth. Camilla shrugged in response. 

“I don’t think He does,” Harrow concluded. “I don’t think He knows that we’re still here and I don’t think He knows you’ve taken a new host. Not yet.”

“You may be right,” Teacher agreed with a nod. “I’ll be sure to alert Him as soon as we are done here.”

Corona’s hand went immediately to her sword. Harrow shot her a look.

“The transmitter was taken,” Harrow said. She kept her voice calm.

Teacher laughed. Judith’s hands pulled at the Sixth’s handcuffs. “So it was. You have a very good memory, Reverend Daughter.”

Gideon chose that moment to make her appearance. 

“Harrow,” she said, exasperation in her tone as she entered the room. “Some day you’re going to tell me why you think drawers are appropriate storage places for -- Oh.” She stopped short at the scene. She was holding a chunk of stale bread in her hand, but she shoved it in her pocket, her hands on her sword as she came forward to join her necromancer. Camilla stepped aside to give her space. 

Though Gideon’s hair was damp, though she had washed and dressed, the smear of paint was still visible on her forehead. She must have left it there on purpose, and Harrow felt her heart flutter at the thought. She turned back toward Teacher, her confidence bolstered, her direction clear.

“I want access to the remaining Lyctor labs,” she announced.

Gideon did not groan audibly, but her body language at her necromancer’s demand made it seem as though she had, as though she’d groaned so loud that her exasperation filled all of the empty space in the room.

“No,” Teacher said, simply.

“I want access to the Ninth laboratory,” Harrow amended. 

“That cannot be arranged. The trial has ended.”

“And if we break down the doors?” Harrow asked. 

“The House will be forced to retaliate.” She expected that.

“How do we get home,” Camilla interjected. It was a very good question. 

“Well, if we find the transmitter, I suppose we could call for the Emperor,” Teacher Deuteros suggested.

“No,” Harrow and Corona said at the exact same time. Camilla’s look betrayed her surprise at an instant agreement between the Third and the Ninth. 

Beside her, now chewing on her hunk of bread, Gideon said, “What about the shuttles?”

“What shuttles?” Camilla asked.

“The same ones that brought us here,” Gideon explained. “That first night we were here the skeletons pushed them into the water. They fell right by our windows.”

Corona’s eyes lit up at that, as though it was something she’d known and forgotten until that very moment.

“Ah, Gideon the Ninth. Very observant,” Teacher said from his place inside the Second’s body. 

“But if the shuttles were sunk --”

“All is not lost,” Teacher assured Camilla. “All is not lost. There is always a way.”

“What is that way?” Harrow prodded.

“I can retrieve them,” Teacher confirmed. “They were placed where they were placed for safekeeping. They can be retrieved.”

Of course, they’d been placed where they were placed for safekeeping. Teacher could have facilitated an exit from the First at any time, well before Cytherea tore her way through seven of the nine houses. 

“Get us off the First and we’re no longer your problem,” Gideon pointed out with a shrug. 

“Mm,” Teacher agreed. He did not seem inclined to argue. “How many shuttles would you need?”

“Three,” Harrow said, immediately. Then she paused. She’d promised Gideon her life, a choice, and she had to make good on that promise. “Four,” she amended.

“Three,” Gideon countered, and then her face twisted a little, an expression that was difficult to read. She was either offended that Harrow assumed Gideon might still want to leave, or she could not believe that she’d just volunteered to willingly return to the Ninth. Harrow waited for Gideon to change her mind. She didn’t. Instead it was Camilla the Sixth who spoke. 

“We may need just the one,” Camilla said, carefully.

“One?” Harrow asked. “If you’re going with the Third, we’ll still need two shuttles.”

Camilla shook her head as though that clarified anything. Harrow looked to Gideon, who shrugged as she chewed at the last of her bread. She looked to Coronabeth Tridentarius, who said, “Let’s discuss this in the Facility.”

**

“One shuttle?” Harrow asked once they were standing at the base of the ladder, in exactly the spot where the Fifth died. The hatch was shut to preclude any attempt by Teacher to listen in. “What are you planning, Sixth?”

Camilla held up her hands. “It’s your plans that I’d like to discuss. What will you do once you leave the First?”

Harrow froze, unsure how to respond to that, unsure that she wanted to, not in front of the Third.

“Is that really any of your concern?” she asked, finally.

“It is,” Camilla said. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She looked tired. “Because if I know you -- and I think I know you well enough in this respect -- the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth is not going to go home and fade into obscurity. You have questions and you’re still seeking answers. That’s why you’re pressing for access to the laboratories, isn’t it? The Sixth has questions too and I owe it to my necromancer to seek out those answers.”

Harrow’s head screamed. Leave it to Palamedes Sextus to try to uncover the Ninth’s secrets even after his death.

“The Ninth is closed to visitors,” she said. “Out of the question.” 

“The Ninth arrived on the First with an untrained cavalier that is unable to die,” Camilla countered, her voice matching Harrow’s in tone and strength.

Gideon stayed blessedly silent.

“Am I wrong?” Camilla pressed.

Harrow sighed. Leave it to the fucking Sixth. “I honestly don’t know.” She waved a hand toward Gideon. “Do you want to try to kill her again? We can test your theory?”

“Harrow,” Gideon sighed, not at all excited at the prospect of fighting Camilla. 

Harrow pressed fingernails into the palm of her hand. She looked at Gideon, standing tall with her hand on her ridiculous sword, with Harrow’s painted kiss prominent on the smooth expanse of her forehead. “My cavalier is still standing, so it appears that it must be true.”

“The Warden possessed a slip of flimsy given to him by Gideon Nav, with Gideon’s name on it. He confirmed that the flimsy was nearly ten thousand years old.” Camilla said, presenting the facts of her case.

“He swore he wouldn’t show that to you,” Gideon protested.

Oh, that stupid slip of flimsy. Harrow had found it while rooting through Gideon’s pockets as she slept. Why her cavalier would go to the Sixth with it instead of her own necromancer was beyond Harrow. No, she remembered now. That was around the time Gideon accused Harrow of murdering the Seventh cavalier. What a fucking mess that was.

“Are you suggesting that my cavalier is ten thousand years old?” Harrow asked, couldn’t help her smile at the thought.

“Of course not.” Camilla shook her head. 

Coronabeth Tridentarius watched them all with wide eyes, head darting back in forth as though watching a game of badminton.

“Surely Gideon is not the first in our history to be given her name, just as you are not the first and will not be the last Camilla.”

Camilla ignored this. “The point stands that there is no going back to our Houses. There is no pretending that everything is as it was. There is no slipping back into our old lives. These are only questions that need answers.”

Harrow pressed her fingers to her eyes. Camilla was, of course, right. Harrow’s head was swimming with questions and all she wanted to do was sleep beside her cavalier for a month straight. She wanted to return to Drearburh and lock the doors and interact with no one but Gideon and her constructs for a full year. She wanted to tear open the door to every Lyctor laboratory in this House and bury herself until she understood what it was that her parents had chosen to take their own lives to protect. 

Corona bowed her head. “I would join your cohort, Reverend Daughter. My swords are yours.” 

“We’re talking treason,” Corona said, voicing the obvious, though there was no outrage in her tone anymore, there was no bubbling righteousness.

“We’re talking knowledge,” Camilla countered. “We’re talking truth.”

Corona let out a breath, looked up toward the hatch. “Six for the truth over solace in lies,” she murmured. That old song. A hymn that was never popular on the Ninth.

This was insane. The Sixth really expected Harrow to take her into the Ninth’s fold, to reveal secrets that had taken Harrow a lifetime to admit to _one_ person and one person alone. This was -- she had sacrificed so much to protect her House. The Sixth’s proposition was unthinkable. To include the Third in that was laughable.

“I would join your cohort,” Camilla pressed.

Harrow turned to Coronabeth Tridentarius. “What about you?” she asked. “Have you lost your mind as well?”

Corona regarded Camilla, a silent conversation held in their darting eyes.

“Perhaps I have,” Corona said, finally. She unsheathed her rapier, fell to one knee, held it out for Harrow with her head bowed. 

Harrow felt her anger die in her throat at this display. She’d done nothing but butt heads with the Princess of Ida. Why would she _kneel_? What possessed her to offer her sword of all things? Was this part of this new role she’d chosen to play at?

Harrow turned to Gideon, incredulous. Gideon was smiling.

“I need a moment with my cavalier,” Harrow announced. She took Gideon roughly by the arm and pulled her aside.

Gideon looked like she was ready for battle, like she was about to follow Corona down onto one knee, her massive sword raised. Gideon was, of course, just excited by Camilla’s use of the word ‘cohort.’ Once they were together, away from the group, Gideon leaned down and pressed a kiss to Harrow’s mouth. Entirely inappropriate. Harrow kissed her back, made sure that her back was turned to the others so she wouldn’t have to see their reaction.

“Get that smile off your face,” Harrow hissed. “We are not a _cohort_. I do not have three cavaliers and the Third and the Sixth have no place on the Ninth.”

“I have no place on the Ninth,” Gideon countered. “I never have.”

“Nav is a Niner name,” Harrow sniffed. 

“My place is with you,” Gideon said. “Screw the Ninth and screw her (“save the innuendos, Nav.”) lady. Literally.”

Harrow groaned and stomped her foot against the metal grate. 

“No,” Gideon continued. “Hold on. The whole reason we’re still here at all is because you and Camilla didn’t trust the Emperor’s Lyctors not to kill us and brush this whole Cytherea business under the rug. You were so sure it wasn’t safe that you and Camilla somehow carried me down that ladder just to find the best hiding place to store my body --”

“There was no time to think.”

“Yeah, so you went with your gut. And your gut said this whole Lyctor business is a freaky sham and the Emperor can’t be trusted. The Sixth agrees.”

“That and there’s something seriously wrong with my cavalier,” Harrow added.

“Right. The Sixth agrees with that too. So think about it. They can’t exactly just go home and forget that any of this ever happened. None of us can. We do that and we’re likely to blow up en route a la Ortus and Sister Glaurica.”

“Nav -- “ Gideon pressed a finger to Harrow’s lips. Harrow was really tempted to bite it.

“You don’t want to tell them your secrets, I get that. But then, who are _they_ going to tell? They’re presumed dead as it is. They step out of line, well --” here she stepped back away from Harrow, spread one arm wide, then tapped at her sword -- “You’ve got an entire unkillable hunk of a cavalier who can deal with them and help you hide bodies.”

Harrow raised her eyebrows. Death threats were not the argument Harrow expected Gideon to make in support of her cause, whatever that cause might be.

“I want to know what’s up with me as much as anyone,” Gideon continued. “I gave that stupid flimsy to the Sixth because I had to know. I missed a lot, but I think having Camilla along could help, and I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like Camilla’s planning to ditch the Third anytime soon either.”

“She will betray us as soon as her sister shows her face,” Harrow warned.

Gideon shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t think so.”

“You don’t _know_ her, Nav.”

“Neither do you,” Gideon countered. “The Sixth seems to know her better than both of us. And there’s one more thing -- one of our first days here I overheard her talking to Abigail Pent at dinner. Corona knows the workings of shuttle transports and knows how to drive them. Or she claimed she did, at any rate.”

Harrow reached out and pulled Gideon in so that she could speak close and quiet, so that she could make sure that Gideon was deadly serious. “Give me your word,” she said. “If they make a single move to betray me, you will do as you said. You will protect me as your necromancer. You will protect the Ninth.”

“I give you my word,” Gideon said. “One flesh, remember? One end.”

Harrow flushed at the turn in her gut at Gideon’s promise.

“Fine,” she said. She stood and straightened her cloak, shut her eyes, took a deep breath. Once composed, she turned on her heel and stalked back toward the others. 

“Here is what we are going to do,” Harrow announced. “We are going to demand that Teacher raise one shuttle, which will transport us off the First and back to the Ninth. We will tell Teacher we are going to the Third. Once that shuttle is raised and ready on the landing terrace, we will lure Teacher back to the hatch and we’ll drop him here, within the Facility. There is some barrier here that he cannot cross. I don’t know if it will destroy him or simply contain him. It does not concern us either way. With Teacher out of the way, you will help me break into the remaining Lyctor labs and retrieve the materials and documents within.”

Harrow turned to the Third. “My cavalier has informed me that she overheard you discussing your experience manning and maintaining shuttles over dinner one night. Is that correct?”

Corona seemed surprised that this was information anyone would request of her. “It is,” she said. 

“Can you operate the shuttles that transported us here?” 

“It’s possible to override the self-navigational system,” Corona agreed. “It was a useful skill on the Third for teenagers with a desire to attend parties off-planet after curfew.”

“Good,” Harrow said. “That’s good.”

“There is a prison that orbits the Ninth,” Camilla pointed out. “It is operated by the Second, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Harrow confirmed. “They do not interfere with the affairs of the Ninth House, but they may recognize the shuttle if we aren’t careful. We can approach on a path that avoids them. We won’t be noted in their records.” 

“What happens once we arrive on the Ninth?” Corona asked. 

“I want to be clear,” Harrow said. “If you follow us to the Ninth, you have chosen the Ninth. The Ninth House is your House. My treason, should this lead to that, is your treason.”

“You’re asking us to promise ourselves to the Tomb? To become Black Vestals?,” Corona clarified. The prospect of being expected to dress permanently in black seemed to give the Third more pause than anything else they’d discussed. 

“No,” Harrow said. “But holding on to an abandoned faith, to abandoned loyalties, will not help anyone. Surely you see that.”

“The face paint?” Corona asked.

“Not enforced,” Harrow promised. “Unless we leave the Ninth, and then it depends on the capacity of the trip and the destination.”

Corona’s face lit up, which seemed a strange response. If only Gideon had reacted like that when Harrow told her the face paint was required in her official capacity as Harrow’s cavalier. 

“Interesting,” Camilla said, though she did not argue or expand on her thoughts.

“We’ll be a cohort of Black Vestals,” Corona said. “Warrior nuns.”

Harrow rolled her eyes. She hoped Gideon was prepared to kill Coronabeth Tridentarius when she inevitably became bored with playing cavalier, with play-acting as a Black Vestal, and attempted to defect back to her sister’s side. She’d absolutely get bored with this, she’d get bored with the Sixth. They had to be prepared for the day that that happened, for the day that Coronabeth Tridentarius showed her true face. 

“Sure,” Harrow agreed. “Warrior nuns. There is one last thing that needs to be said. Should either of you turn on us -- should you betray me, my cavalier, or the Ninth -- “

“Oh, of course,” Corona cut in. “You would absolutely have to kill us.”

“Expected,” Camilla said with a shrug.

Gideon grinned. Even without her skull mask it looked menacing. A nervous laugh erupted from the Third, but she did not object. Camilla simply shrugged again. 

“What now?” Gideon asked, eventually. 

“Perhaps an oath of some sort?” Corona suggested. 

“Group hug?” Gideon asked in return. She spread her arms wide. 

Harrow had no intention of engaging in any semblance of a ‘group hug.’ 

“Arms down, Nav,” she said. 

Corona seemed delighted by this entire exchange. She laughed again, her hand coming up to cover her mouth. 

Harrow took a deep breath. She remembered how it felt to hold the broken bloody waste of her cavalier cradled in her arms, the broken bloody waste of her entire existence, her whole universe. 

Everything had changed since that moment, but their choices remained the same. They could become the Emperor’s servants, placing themselves at the mercy of the Emperor’s Lyctors, or they could forge their own future, find out the truths that the Emperor hid behind locked doors and within locked tombs, within the very heart of Harrow’s cavalier.

Harrow looked to Corona, to Camilla, and finally to Gideon. She took in their would-be cohort, and Harrow made the only decision she could, the only viable choice. 

She stepped toward the ladder, started her ascent. 

“Are we ready to go?”


End file.
